Re: enable-foo vs. with-foo is illogical

Ben Wing <ben(a)666.com&gt; writes: The logic is supposed to be the following: --with-foo: Require (or disable with --require) the use of external software that XEmacs can link with and/or interface to. Hypothetical examples: --with-berkeley-db, --with-gnome, --with-ssl, --with-tiff These are typically turned off to reduce the number of dependencies of the resulting XEmacs, or sometimes to suppress autodetection of those libraries when such autodetection is buggy. --enable-foo: Gives user the choice whether to include "optional compile-time features" into his XEmacs. Hypothetical examples: --enable-md5, --enable-optimization, --enable-bignum, --enable-error-checking, --enable-mule These feaures are typically turned off to reduce code size or to remove unnecessary (error-checking), experimental (bignum) or untrusted (mule) features from the executable. If a feature includes both interfacing to external software and considerable amounts of internal code, `--with' is a safe choice. When the software is internal or must be present in the source tree, `--enable' should be used; it should have been `--enable-infodock'. Some options don't follow in any of those two categories, and I'm not sure how those are "supposed" to be handled. The idea is that people familiar with the Autoconf conventions find XEmacs's configure easy to use. While those conventions do not bind us, it's a good thing to respect them when possible.