Re: gnunet-config and build informations (bug #5708)

[Schanzenbach, Martin]

Hello Alessio,

thanks for the work!

I personally have never written an autoconf macro, but I would assume that it
makes sense to have it.

Regarding your patch: Lgtm, it addresses the first (basic) feature how I would 
expect it to happen.
Which is allowing the caller to retrieve cflags or ldflags.
This is what most *-config programs _also_ do and what our *.pc files should 
provide as well through pkg-config.

But what the OP in the report also and possibly primarily thinks is missing is 
a way to get the build information
which is output on configure at the end which is useful for users to understand 
what kind of build configuration their gnunet installation is in.
E.g. the things listed at
https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet.git/tree/configure.ac#n2199 and following.

Similar to, for example:
$ libgcrypt-config --algorithms

I would assume something like

$ gnunet-config --transports
or
$ gnunet-config --experimental
or
$ gnunet-config --http-client-backend
etc

is what is expected.
So I think it makes sense to keep the bug open, but I think we can still get 
this in for 0.15.0.

Thanks again and BR
Martin

On 24. Jul 2021, at 22:51, Alessio Vanni <vannilla@firemail.cc> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I made an attempt at implementing what was discussed in bug #5708 [0],
> that is, additional flags for `gnunet-config' to print various
> informations similar to what other `*-config' tools do
> (e.g. `nss-config'.)
> 
> After sending this mail I'm going to push a branch called
> 'dev/vanni/build-info'; it's a separate branch because even though the
> changes are very simple (even including the documentation), I'd like to
> get some feedback first, especially if more flags are requested.
> 
> The following is a bit off-topic, but since it's something that might
> leverage the new gnunet-config flags, I'm going to ask here regardless.
> 
> Would it be possible to provide with the core GNUnet installation an
> Autoconf macro to detect GNUnet properly?  I'm using Autoconf to manage
> the GNUnet-based applications I'm writing, but detecting GNUnet is a bit
> of a mess.
> 
> Of course with the new gnunet-config I can just rely on it, but if I had
> a macro provided by GNUnet itself, much like other programs like for
> example Guile Scheme do [1], it'd be better.
> 
> This is especially true as getting a third-party GNUnet-based
> application to compile has surprising caveats: a very noticeable one is
> that, apparently, the `netinet/in.h' header is required when neither
> `gnunet_config.h' nor `platform.h' are `#include'd (which is what
> happens with third-party applications, at least those built using
> Autoconf.)
> 
> This is something that can be noticed only when the program is actually
> compiled, but with a GNUnet-specific macro the check for the necessary
> headers (and all that it entails) can be done implicitly by the macro
> itself.
> 
> I've made an attempt locally which first uses pkg-config and then falls
> back to the new gnunet-config, but before pushing it to the remote
> repository I'd like, once again, to hear some feedback on the matter, be
> it to pay attention to certain configurations or even be just a matter
> of following certain conventions.
> 
> Thank you,
> A.V.
> 
> ---
> 
> [0] https://bugs.gnunet.org/view.php?id=5708
> [1] 
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git;a=blob;f=meta/guile.m4;h=48642f027f7b002d40658511fe3bb831e83ebdfc;hb=HEAD
>

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