Re: [AC sjt-xft] Autoconf.ac upgrade.

Jerry> FWIW, I would like to see configure.ac be committed to the Jerry> mainline so that it is easier for developers like me to Jerry> hack on it. Is anybody here really so short of diskspace that cvs checkout -r sjt-xft xemacs is not a full solution to that? If the answer is "no", then the real question is "is it ready for the testers?" (1) configure.ac is known buggy (I've cleaned up a few, but Ben's GNUmakefile bug is still open, and I suspect others remain). (2) COMPLEX_OPTION support is probably buggy although it works for me with Xft configuration. I'd like to develop that off the mainline for a bit, but if ac 2.59 support is available in mainline, most testers will use that. (3) Although have no problem with Malcolm's choices of 'enable' vs. 'with' on the grounds of what "sounds right", more than half of them do not conform to the AC convention of "if it requires external support, use 'with', if it adds a feature internally, use 'enable'. Until that's been properly reviewed, I don't want to burden the testers with "configure option du jour". (4) There are probably a couple more gotchas like --with-mule -> --enable-mule (I spent 15 minutes debugging a failure to enable Mule, then realized it was probably a PEBKAC, and of course it was!) I _think_ AC will detect and bitch about all unknown options except --with-* (and maybe --enable-*), so there's only a limited set of probable errors to worry about. (1) the testers have more or less bought into; I'd just like to make it "less", but the current state probably is OK. (2)--(4) I think SHOULD (in the sense of RFC 1219) be resolved first. FWIW, my personal take is that the AC convention is just broken. All features, internal or external, should be enabled with --enable-FEATURE and library support be autodetected, and if for some reason multiple external libraries might be available, use --with-FEATURE=LIBRARY. But since Malcolm mostly used --with-, that would involve a lot of changes. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.