The current state of move to autoconf 2.5

[Didier Verna]

Michael Sperber <sperber at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

>>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen J Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
>
>>>>>> "ms" == Michael Sperber <sperber at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:
>
> ms> I find myself confused by the dichotomy between --enable-xxx
> ms> and --with-xxx (especially as the configure script seems to
> ms> know it's easy to get confused).  Is there any easy way to
> ms> predict when it's which one?
>
> Stephen> Not as far as I can see.  My taste differs from Malcolm's in several
> Stephen> cases.  AFAICT the implementations of --enable-xxx and --with-xxx are
> Stephen> basically identical.
>
> I don't know about the technicalities---but how hard is it to just
> drop the ---with and --enable prefixes entirely?  If not, I believe we
> should just go with one of the two.

        Normally, --enable should be used to activate internal features
(e.g. debugging), and --with should be used to compile stuff requiring
external components (e.g. png support). The frontier between the two is not
/that/ clear though.

In any case, if we're going to break backward compatibility, it shouldn't be
to invent yet another scheme of ours, but to conform more closely to the
autotools'tradition/convention. People using different autotools driven
packages like them to behave in a similar way (and will for instance issue a
quick "configure --help | grep --enable" to figure out what's available).

-- 
Didier Verna, didier at lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (1) 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, France   Fax.+33 (1) 53 14 59 22   didier at xemacs.org