I've just checked in a rewrite of configure's method for guessing
the right template file to use when --with-template is not provided.

The old method was to look for an exact match to the $host value
(from config.guess) in template/.similar, and if that wasn't found
to strip all version information (digits and dots at the end) from
$host and try to match that against prefixes of entries in .similar.
This is clearly broken, because given .similar entries like
	sparc-sun-sunos4=sunos4_gcc
	sparc-sun-sunos5=solaris_sparc_gcc
it is incapable of correctly choosing the one to use for a $host
value like "sparc-sun-sunos4.1.3".  After you strip the "4.1.3"
there is no basis for choosing the right .similar entry.

What I checked in tries for an exact match, and then tries to match
.similar entries to prefixes of the $host string.  This is fairly
obviously the right way round, IMHO.  I was able to remove some
redundant entries in .similar after making the change; for instance
	i386-pc-bsdi3.0=bsdi_2.1
	i386-pc-bsdi3.1=bsdi_2.1
collapse to
	i386-pc-bsdi3=bsdi_2.1
which has some chance of working on bsdi 3.2 as well, if there is such
a thing. 

*However*, I'm not too sure that the shell-script constructs I used
are 100% portable.  If you find that configure now goes belly-up when
you leave off --with-template, please let me know.

I checked this into the 6.4 tree as well, since it is in response
to a recent complaint that 6.4 fails to configure correctly on
SunOS 4.1.3...

			regards, tom lane

Mon, 23 Nov 1998 00:02:18 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
configure template-matching change
On Mon, 23 Nov 1998, Tom Lane wrote:

> *However*, I'm not too sure that the shell-script constructs I used
> are 100% portable.  If you find that configure now goes belly-up when
> you leave off --with-template, please let me know.
> 
> I checked this into the 6.4 tree as well, since it is in response
> to a recent complaint that 6.4 fails to configure correctly on
> SunOS 4.1.3...

	Please reverse it from the v6.4 tree until such a point in time
that you are certain that it *is* going to work for all platforms.  The
v6.4 is meant to be stable at all times, and, from your para two up, you
aren't certain what platforms this change will break...

Marc G. Fournier                                
Systems Administrator @ hub.org 
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org 


Mon, 23 Nov 1998 01:20:17 -0400 (AST)
The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: [HACKERS] configure template-matching change