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From: | Steven G. Johnson |
Subject: | proposal - command-line option checking |
Date: | Wed, 13 Dec 2006 21:32:04 -0500 |
User-agent: | Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Macintosh/20041206) |
Not only is it unfriendly, it's also unexpected: virtually every other Unix command-line program complains if you pass it an unknown argument.
Yes, I know that programs which use AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS need to pass options through without checking since they might be used in subdirectories. But these are the exception, not the rule, and it doesn't make sense to penalize most users for this.
Hence, PROPOSAL:* Autoconf configure scripts should check their --with and --enable arguments, and exit with an error if the option was not specified in an AC_ARG_ENABLE or AC_ARG_WITH statement, unless:
* This option-checking is disabled if AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS is used. (At least initially; a future implementation may check the available options in the subdirectories, if a good way can be found to do this.)
* The option checking can be disabled by using a new macro, AC_DISABLE_OPTION_CHECKING, or by passing --disable-option-checking, for those people who prefer or require the legacy behavior for some reason.
What do people think? I don't want to code up a patch until there is some consensus about the desired functionality.
Steven G. Johnson
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