Re: [PATCH] configure: Fix error message when C compiler is not working

[Peter Maydell]

On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 at 14:38, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/03/2024 14.12, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > I think I would prefer as a structure:
> >
> > (1) suppress the "unrecognized host CPU" message if "$host_os" == "bogus"
> > (2) do the "check the C compiler works" test as its own test immediately
> >      after we print the help message (and not guarded by testing $host_os)
> > (3) leave the "Unrecognized host OS" check code as it is
>
> Hmm, another idea: Why do we print the --help output that late in the
> configure script at all? Couldn't we move this earlier, to the place where
> we already check for the --cc et al. switches? Then we could get rid of the
> "bogus" stuff completely?

We currently print in the help what the default values for --cc,
--host_cc, etc are -- which means we need to first figure out
those default values. We also print the default target list, and
to figure that out we need to know whether this is Linux or not,
and what the host architecture is. And to figure out the host
architecture we need to run the C compiler.

We could move --help earlier if we were prepared to make its
output more static and less dependent on the host environment,
I guess.

thanks
-- PMM