Re: [Gnucap-devel] autoconf-WIP branch

[al davis]

On Friday 19 July 2013, Felix Salfelder wrote:
> > 2. It does lots of tests that seem irrelevant, to the
> > extent  that if something really is wrong it will often be
> > buried by the clutter.  I don't see any place where those
> > tests were requested.  It seems that autotools ALWAYS does
> > this, everywhere.  It checks for C headers that gnucap
> > doesn't use, and doesn't check for the C++ headers that
> > gnucap does use. What really bothers me about this is that
> > I could not find where such tests were requested.
> 
> yes, there are a lot of tests, none of which looks extremely
> superfluous... but i can have a look, can you suggest a test
> to start?
> 
> if it should check for c++ headers that it currently doesnt,
> maybe "autoscan" can help. autoscan reads throught the
> source code and (nondestructively) writes out everything
> that might be useful (to configure.scan iirc).

I was commenting on the inconsistency of explicitly checking 
lots of stuff that is not used, while not checking for the ones 
that ARE used.

Also, that I did not see in configure.ac where those tests were 
requested, which indicates that autoconf is not doing what the 
config files tell it to do.  That brings up a lesson I learned 
may years ago, the hard way .....  Magic behavior is bad.

Over the years, I have run into cases where programs failed to 
build because of those irrelevant tests.

I could see "checking for a proper build environment", and if it 
isn't a detailed message to guide in fixing it.  I see no harm 
in leaving out the whole thing.

It looks like we are stuck with it.  That's unfortunate but it 
looks like we must go with it.