distro-configs files, autogen.sh options, defaults etc

[Lubos Lunak]

On Tuesday 24 of April 2012, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-04-24 at 11:49 +0200, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > Right now all those 100 developers have to have a long list of options,
> > half of them because they are needed, other half because they'd prefer
> > not to build repeatedly stuff they already have installed
>
> I don't really get why developers are using vast long lists of options.
> ./autogen.sh
> + a few dev-mode options like werror, dbgutil or debug seems to make
> sense
> ./autogen.sh --with-system-libs if people want to skip building stuff
> they have installed already

 But that doesn't work, that's the point.

 Running "./autogen.sh --with-system-libs" fails as soon as it finds one 
external library that does not exist system-wide (and there's pretty much 
bound to be one, given what all kinds of libs we use). So one has to try, 
fail, add one --without-system-foo, and repeat until it builds. And try again 
with next distro upgrade, or carry a growing list of options.

 Thinking of it, it'd be probably enough if --with-system-libs acted 
as --with-system-foo=auto for all such external libs.

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l.lunak at suse.cz