* Adrian Aichner <adrian(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes: No it won't cause any problems to commit this patch. What it might do is postpone (possibly indefinitely) the right fix. But seeing as though you are the build package maintainer, Adrian, I'll let this be your call. I withdraw my veto. Adrian, if you think it's worth it, go ahead and commit. -- |---<Steve Youngs>---------------<GnuPG KeyID: A94B3003>---| | I am Dyslexic of Borg. | | Fusistance is retile. Your arse will be laminated. | |------------------------------------&lt;steve(a)sxemacs.org&gt;---|

Joachim> You know that configure.usage is prominently featured on Joachim> http://www.xemacs.org/Install/index.html as the reference Joachim> for configuration options, don't you? (item 5.) Actually, most of us don't. Most of the website content is managed by the same person who wrote the build package. So thank you for pointing that out. :-) That needs to be changed to refer to `./configure --help' and/or `./configure --usage'. The file `configure.usage' is an internal implementation detail, subject to change at _any_ time. (That doesn't mean we'll gratuitously remove that file immediately, but it's under a sentence of cvs rm which will not be delayed indefinitely, either.) Joachim> configure help has not enough information (yet). What specifically is missing? Joachim> My patch is band-aid, granted; but I think the chances Joachim> are very small that anybody will step up to fix build in Joachim> the next few weeks, i.e., I'd be happy to put money on the other side of that bet; the author of build is probably the single most active developer right now in terms of doing something for XEmacs project infrastructure every single day. For values of "now" stretching back several years. :-) In any case, there are several large changes looming which will almost surely involve new configure options at least, and possibly changes to existing options. So unless build is changed to parse --help output, patches like yours are going to be needed frequently in the next few months. I think it's unreasonable to ask other developers to maintain an obsolete file for the sake of a single package that they don't use. Joachim> Or add a big disclaimer that it doesn't work. I don't think that's necessary. This _is_ the bleeding edge, after all. Bring lots more Band-Aids. :-) I'm sorry you got burned by this, you couldn't know if we didn't. Feel free to ask about anything that seems dubious before you do too much work. Sincere regards, -- School of Systems and Information Engineering 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.

Joachim> configure help has not enough information (yet). SJT> What specifically is missing? Joachim> -- Categorization of options. I believe Malcolm has demonstrated a patch to do this but I haven't had time to review the patch itself. Joachim> -- Mentioning the domain of enumeration values in the Joachim> option explanation. There's some code in the Xft branch to do this somewhat automatically. I don't know if it works properly with the new with/enable aliasing, though, and I doubt it's used for anything but Xft yet. Joachim> -- Formatting discipline to help parsing by build.el. That's hard with autoconf 2.59, which has its own way of doing things. Joachim> -- Maybe also mentioning the type of option values in Joachim> the message. That is not easy to decipher from the Joachim> build.el source. What do you mean by "type"? This is a shell script, they're all strings, technically. -- School of Systems and Information Engineering 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.

Joachim Schrod wrote: Actually, with-package-path is something more complex than a list of strings; it's actually three separate lists separated by double colons. we could either add a code in the normal help string or provide it as a separate argument to XE_FOO_ARG, visible only when you call `configure --some-weird-option'.