On Wednesday 02 July 2008 06:42:50 Ralf Wildenhues wrote: > * Tim Post wrote on Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 07:39:01AM CEST: > > I've been including most checks that autoscan suggests. My > > reasoning is that someone down the line might need those checks > > and may not be able to autoreconf in order to include them. > > Probably bad practice ... > > Not necessarily. But likely it leads to more configure tests than > are really needed. In some cases, it may actually be harmful. For example, I'm autoconfiscating a package as a first step towards getting it to build for MS-Windows, but I'm actually doing my build with a mingw32 cross, hosted on GNU/Linux. autoscan suggests that I should include AC_FUNC_MALLOC and AC_FUNC_REALLOC; if I blindly follow that advice, then I have to provide implementations for rpl_malloc() and for rpl_realloc(). However, the application I'm working on isn't actually vulnerable to the issue those macros test, so there really is no reason to go to this length. Ok, you may say, "why not just include the tests anyway; what harm can they do?" Well, they actually break the build when cross-compiling, because neither is cross-compile capable, and will force the build to rely on the replacement functions, even when the targetted host has malloc() and realloc() implementations which would pass the configure tests, if configured natively. The moral of this is that blindly including everything autoscan suggests may not be wise; you should give careful consideration to whether the suggested tests are really necessary. Regards, Keith. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
