Portability with scconfig

Libmawk is configured using an embedded copy of scconfig. In a distribution tarball, it's a snapshot of scconfig; in an svn repository it is an svn external, which guarantees libmawk is using the latest version of scconfig.

Scconfig is a self-contained project configuration tool which depends only on Make and an ANSI (C89) C compiler. Scconfig can test different things on a system, often by compiling and running test programs. Besides saving test results in a text file, it can also generate text files like Makefiles or include files with content depending on those test results.

There are artificial limits on portability tho. While in theory it is possible to scretch the system so that it really works on all operating systems ever existed, or at least on all UNIX-like systems, it is not the goal. This decision is a trade-off between portability and maintainability. Also between portability and code size (or bloat). The artificial limits are:

a C compiler that fully supports ANSI (C89) C is required
make supporting traditional Makefiles is required
no efforts for systems older than 80s UNIX systems; for example libmawk depends on pipe(2), and if it is missing, some of the functionality will be missing
mawk had support for DOS - this is removed, because
- it was already marked as somewhat obsolete or at least untested in version 1.3.3, which is the base for libmawk; documentation suggested users should use an older version of mawk on DOS
- since DOS poses drastic limitation on memory, and mawk seemed to be a memory hog, it is hard to believe someone would actually write an application that would share memory with libmawk and still do something useful - and after all, the purpose of libmawk is exactly embedding awk in applications
- too many #ifdefs scattered the code for supporting DOS

Libmawk 0.9.7 is reported to configure and compile on the following systems:

system compiles
out of
the box FPE problems awklib
test binary save/load
save/load
[i386] GNU/Linux yes no ok ok
[amd64] GNU/Linux yes no ok ok
[i386] Minix
[i386] NetBSD 4.0 yes no ok ok
[i386] open solaris 5.11
[i386] OpenBSD 5.0 yes no ok ok
[i386] FreeBSD 9.0 yes no ok ok
[IP22] IRIX 5.3 no minor doesn't work
[i386] Dragonfly BSD 2.10 yes no ok ok

Libmawk 0.9.6 is reported to configure and compile on the following systems:

system compiles
out of
the box FPE problems awklib
test binary save/load
save/load
i386 GNU/Linux yes no ok ok
amd64 GNU/Linux yes no ok ok
i386 Minix yes yes ok ok
i386 NetBSD 4.0 yes yes ok ok
i386 open solaris 5.11 yes no ok ok
i386 OpenBSD 5.0 yes yes ok ok
i386 FreeBSD 9.0 yes yes ok ok
IP22 IRIX 5.3 yes no ok doesn't work
i386 Dragonfly BSD 2.10 yes yes ok ok

system	compiles out of the box	FPE problems	awklib test	binary save/load save/load
[i386] GNU/Linux	yes	no	ok	ok
[amd64] GNU/Linux	yes	no	ok	ok
[i386] Minix
[i386] NetBSD 4.0	yes	no	ok	ok
[i386] open solaris 5.11
[i386] OpenBSD 5.0	yes	no	ok	ok
[i386] FreeBSD 9.0	yes	no	ok	ok
[IP22] IRIX 5.3	no	minor		doesn't work
[i386] Dragonfly BSD 2.10	yes	no	ok	ok