Re: MinGw port of gawkextlib

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: bug-gawk@gnu.org
> From: Manuel Collado <mcollado2011@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 09:50:22 +0200
> 
> El 16/05/2022 a las 20:51, Andrew J. Schorr escribió:
> > On Mon, May 16, 2022 at 08:59:45PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > [...]
> >> I see the problem.  The value of --with-gawk= is supposed to be the
> >> _directory_ of the Gawk executable.
> 
> Well, not exactly. The expected value is not where gawk.exe resides 
> (c:\gnu\bin in my case) but the --prefix value used to install gawk 
> (c:\gnu in my case).

It could be both, according to my reading of the configure-time test:

                if test -x "$withval/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
                        GAWKPROG="$withval/gawk${EXEEXT}"

                elif test -x "$withval/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
                        GAWKPROG="$withval/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"

                elif test -x "$withval/usr/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
                        GAWKPROG="$withval/usr/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"

                fi

> >> the configure script would say
> >>
> >>    --with-gawk=DIR        Use gawk in DIR
> >
> > I agree -- that is clearer. That patch is in the queue.
> 
> Shouldn't it be better --with-gawk=INSTALL_PREFIX ?

I don't think it's reasonable to ask users to remember the prefix used
when installing Gawk.  They might not even know that if they didn't
build Gawk themselves.  And MS-Windows users are likely not to grasp
the notion of "install prefix" as easily as Unix users.  By contrast,
"directory where you have Gawk" is easily understood and relatively
easily discovered if not known in advance.