On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, John W. Eaton wrote:
[correct reasons elided]On 4-Mar-2005, Stepan Kasal <kasal@xxxxxx> wrote:
| My idea was to have AC_MSG_NEED with args | (@var{dependency-name}, @var{dependency-text}, @ovar{priority}) | used like |
I think I understand why you want these kinds of messages. There have
[...]
Given that we now have nice packaging systems, messages like the one you propose above are not always the best advice. On a modern
So perhaps it is best to just have the messages say something like
You need the lexical analyzer flex to rebuild lex.c from lex.l. If your OS has a package system, you may be able to use that to install a recent copy.
I think it's better to say it's a GNU program or whatever, so people can find out which form (rpm, gentoo, ???, package) which is probably listed at the program's site somewhere. But there still needs to be some kind of message, whatever form it takes.
I hesitate to add something like
If not, then you can find flex at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/flex.
because the URL may change, and it means that either the person
In the case of The Free Software Foundation, not that often, but in theory, yes.
writing configure.in will need to know about all these things (even they may not have a clue where flex really comes from if they just get
They do have access to other people helping them with patches, and surely the authors of a given program should know which other
programs that depends on, because they write it with a certain
amount of portability in mind?
it from their package system) or you have to embed this knowledge in autoconf, which seems bad and would only work for a few tools in
So where does it go, then? People have said not to put it in a text file, because that is hard to maintain and takes no account of the dynmaic nature of configure. You're saying it shouldn't go in autoconf. Nobody is saying that this macro has to be used for every single dependency, but it makes expressing this information easy where it is known. Where it is not known then we are suggesting AC_MSG_END or soemthing similar, to make some text appear at the end, even if it's just "you ain't got no lex, Lieutenant Dan" :-).
autoconf which have specific macros (bison, flex/lex, ...).
It would also work for user defined tests as well, just that first tag would have to be different.
jwe
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