[comp.emacs] Making GNU Emacs on hybrid UNIXs

dsill@NSWC-OAS.ARPA (Dave Sill) (08/25/87)

We have a half-dozen VAXs running a hybrid BSD 4.1c/System III on
which I'm trying to compile GNU Emacs.  When I include s-bsd4-1.h I
get missing include files when compiling sysdep.c, among other things.
I looked but didn't see an s-*.h for System III.  Any suggestions?

This brings up a question I've had before.  How can I tell what flavor
of UNIX a given machine is running?  Is there a program or script
available which checks such things and produces some kind of report?

-Dave Sill

Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com (08/26/87)

If you want to try to bring up GNU Emacs on a SysIII machine, try
starting from the SysV.0 s- file, s-usg5-0.h.  Depending on the
peculiarities of your hybrid machine, you may need the shortnames
hack, you won't have terminfo, nor will you have full BSD IPC in 4.1c.

For telling what sort of UNIX system your machine is running, I have
doubts that there is a single general answer.  You could write a
script which goes poking about to find SysV- or BSD-specific include
files (e.g., existence of termio.h == SysIII or SysV [except on
Pyramids]), you could check for the existence of utilities only found
on one or the other, or you could check the /lib/libc.a namelist for
system call names only found on one or the other (uname, for example,
on SysV; getpriority on BSD).  Come to think of it, go look at the
Configure script that comes with rn - it takes care of almost all such
problems.

Karl