Host Type
One of the first difficulties you may encounter in running a configure script is when the script aborts with an error message stating that the host system cannot be determined.
Strictly speaking, the host type
refers
to the system on which software will run, and the build
type
refers to the system on which the software
is being built. It is possible to build software on one system to run
on another system, but to do so requires a cross-compiler. We will
not concern ourselves with cross-compiler issues. Thus, for our
discussion, both the host type and the build (and target) types are
the same:
powerpc-apple-darwin
VERSION,
where the VERSION denotes the
particular version of Darwin. In fact, a configure
script detects Mac OS X by the host/build type named
Darwin, since Darwin is the actual operating
system underlying Mac OS X. This can be verified by issuing the
uname -v command, which tells you that
you’re running a Darwin kernel, the kernel version,
and when it was last built.
Many configure scripts are designed to determine the host system, since the resulting makefiles will differ depending on the type of system for which the software is being built. The configure script is designed to be used with two files related to the host type, usually residing in the same directory as the configure script. These files are config.guess, which is used to help guess the host type; and config.sub, which is used to validate the host type and to put it into a canonical form (such ...
Get Mac OS X for Unix Geeks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
