[cairo] Re: Flag for FP-challenged platforms

[Carl Worth]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:48:20 +0100, Koen Kooi wrote:
> Yes, thank you for proposing to break cross-compiling for everyone
> that doesn't (or can't) use scratchbox.

I have no plan to do that.

For any "test the system by running a program" there must be a way for
the user to override that in order to support cross-compiling. And I
even mentioned as much above in my comments about "priming the
autoconf cache".

And my crazy idea here wouldn't be new breakage anyway. Cairo is
_already_ doing checks at configure-time by compiling and running
programs. So if that's broken, then cairo's already broken.

Now, what I do consider very broken is that the way to force this is
so obscure, (editing a .cache file with some obscure syntax), and that
the error message one gets when the problem comes up will be totally
useless, (some program will fail to run due to being compiled for the
wrong architecture and then configure will just abort).

I think that's something that should be addressed upstream in
autoconf---it would be much nicer if it would detect that and say
something like:

	Failed to automatically detect feature <X>.
	This is a common occurrence if you are cross-compiling.
	If so, please manually specify this feature by editing
	<some-file> and adding an <X>=<something> option from among
	the following choices:

		<1> something...
		<2> something else...
		...

And it would be even better if that message could direct the user to
use command-line options instead of directing the user to modify the
cache file. That would allow people to pass around configure
command-lines for cross-compiling software for given platforms, (which
would be easier than passing around configure command lines PLUS
chunks of config.cache files).

But anyway, that's all stuff that could be improved in autoconf to
make it that much _easier_ to do cross-compilation. But it's all
perfectly possible now.

So take the issue up with autoconf upstream, please. (And feel free to
quote any of the above if you would like to).

-Carl
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