RE: uname -m and MACHINE_ARCH

["Larson, Timothy E." <TELarson%west.com@localhost>]

> pkgsrc's guide mentions that there used to be a ${ARCH} variable that
> expanded to the same value as "uname -m".
> 
> However, as the guide says, this feature was removed.
> 
> I have a package (wip/libmicro) where nearly all build and
> installtation
> scripts use the output of uname -m to generate binaries.
> 
> I currently use MACHINE_ARCH, which expands to `uname -p`.
> 
> Out of interest, for portability reasons, what would be advised to make
> the whole thing more portable, both from an OS and architecture PoV?

This intersects a problematic area on AIX (see PR 29386/41410 and related 
threads on this list, like my 21/jul/2009 comment), and I am all in favor of 
creating a wrapper to generalize this for portability's sake.


Tim