[Xastir] Imagemagick

[Tom Russo]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 03:01:06PM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor, containing:
> On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Curt, WE7U wrote:
> 
> > > At some point we should go through configure.ac and fix the "--with-" and
> > > "--enable" issue --- "--with-" should only be used to help configure locate
> > > external libraries and headers, and "--enable-" should be used to turn on and
> > > off features.
> >
> > Thanks Tom.  A/B look like reasonable solutions to his problem.
> >
> > As far as the last point, we should probably get that onto the
> > bug-list so that it gets done.  If I was aware of it earlier, I had
> > already forgotten!
> 
> Oh yea, let me add that I didn't have a clue about the differences
> between --with and --enable.  I thought we were doing it all
> correctly.  I have a lot to learn yet about the automake/autoconf
> stuff.
> 
> It's good SOMEBODY out there knows about this stuff!

Actually, the real problem is the use of --with- as a simple binary.
Actually, the real problem is that this stuff is confusing as can be and 
way more of a kludge than one would think given how ubiquitous 
autoconf/automake are.

According to the autoconf docs, --with- is meant to control features 
dependent on external libraries and such, --enable- is meant to control
internal features.  So for example "--enable-dbfawk" or "--disable-dbfawk"
would be intended uses of --enable, and --with-imagemagick would be right.
Of course, they both work pretty much the same way, so they can be used any way
one chooses.

One source of confusion is that --with- is also frequently used in other 
packages to specify paths to external libraries, and that's not going to work 
with the way Xastir's configure script is set up (where most --with options
are expected to be yes or no --- only the bdb stuff is set up to allow
path flexibility by having --with-bdb-incdir an --with-bdb-libdir) 

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 
 "When life gives you lemons, find someone with a paper cut."