[Python-Dev] Misc/*-NOTES?

[Martin v. Löwis]

Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> writes:

> ?  It's not obvious to a casual observer - me - that there is much
> AIX3-specfic code in the source tree.  Pyconfig.h.in has a comment
> suggesting _ALL_SOURCE should be definted if running on AIX3, but I don't
> see it used anywhere.

That is part of the problem: Nobody knows what AIX versions need which
of the AIX changes. The _ALL_SOURCE stuff comes from AC_AIX; it is not
clear either whether this is relevant only for AIX 3, or whether the
the comment is wrong (or incomplete).

By removing support for unused systems, and recording the version that
triggered a certain change, when the change is made, we can eventually
know what fragments are valid for what systems (there won't be an
automatic way to find out whether a certain fragment is not needed
anymore, so we have to find somebody who tests this for us).

So if we can find somebody with AIX 4.1 who can confirm that it works
without AC_AIX, we can remove AC_AIX in Python 2.5. If we can find
nobody, we can try to eliminate AIX 4.1 support in 2.6, and so on.

Regards,
Martin