[Xastir-dev] --with-bdb-include=/sw/include/db4

[Curt, WE7U]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Tom Russo wrote:

> The Cygwin-specific stuff needed to be added primarily because there's
> something in configure that overrides user-specified CFLAGS, so trying to shut
> off optimization can't be done on the configure command line.  If that were
> removed and something like:
>
>  CFLAGS="-O0" ./configure
>
> worked, then there would be need only for users who have the problem to
> specify options that fix it.  As it is, specifying that is a no-op, because
> later on configure simply overrides CFLAGS.  There are those folks who have
> beefy Windows machines with plenty of memory who are now getting unoptimized
> code under Cygwin for no reason.

Yes, made a choice between not compiling at all on some systems, or
compiling with optimization turned off/slowing down some running
Xastir/Cygwin systems.  The lesser of two evils.


> I'm with Derrick on this one.  Putting all sorts of system-specific
> (and package-management system-specific) oddball probes into configure is not
> "dangerous" but it is not quite what configure is meant to do.  If we start
> (or even continue) down that path, configure will be an unmaintainable mess
> in short order.  There are simply too many systems and package management
> systems to make this a reasonable approach.
>
> Configure should not be expected to guess every non-standard location of
> every possible package a developer makes the code depend on.  It should
> provide the user with the means to specify where to find things that can't be
> found with a simple set of probes.  For the most part we have that.  What
> there should be is some system specific user notes in READMEs, telling new
> users that if they're installing libraries from package-management system
> Fooble, they will likely need additional configure options to locate their
> installed libraries, and tell them what those options are.   Expecting
> "./configure" with no arguments to work 100% for all optional features on
> all systems is unrealistic, and puts the burden on the code maintainers to
> keep track of all those systems' peculiarities.

I think I'm getting confused as to whether we're talking about the
possible Fink tweaks, or the Cygwin tweaks I just did to turn off
optimization.

All I'm after is:  More users able to configure/compile Xastir
out-of-the-box on whatever system they're on.  If people must add
configure flags in order to get things going, most of them won't get
past that step and will go use something else.  Most users aren't
that persistent.  They try once, perhaps twice, then give up.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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