[Libreoffice] configure.in monstrosity

[Lubos Lunak]

On Thursday 08 of September 2011, Eike Rathke wrote:
> Hi Tomáš,
>
> On Thursday, 2011-09-08 14:50:00 +0200, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
> > It would be really nice if that huge file would be split into several
> > separate parts per-use.
> >
> > So I would like to propose slow cleanup/splitting to have simple
> > configure.ac with
> > platform check, and then i would move each configure option and
> > switches into per feature
> > macros in m4/.
>
> IMHO not so good, it's much easier to load that one file into the editor
> and search for occurrences of variables than if it was split over
> several places.

 I think the trick is not to have (most) variables split over several places.

 In fact in the KDE build system mostly only "generic" configure checks are 
kept in the toplevel dir and each sub(subsub)dir can have its own file with 
checks, and, as far as I can say, configure stuff happens to be noticeably 
less cumbersome to handle if you have it in small consistent pieces and know 
what it depends on and what uses it.

> > This way we could easily overview all the options, and it would also
> > improve the readability.
>
> autoconf stuff isn't readable anyway, so.. ;-)

 But that doesn't mean we intentionally have to make it even worse :).

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz