[gst-devel] configure.base prototype

[Richard Boulton]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 02:27:18PM -0700, Erik Walthinsen wrote:
> I've written up a prototype of what I think we should be doing for
> dependent libs in configure.base.
<snip>

This is a good suggestion, I throughly agree.

I suggest that as much as possible is coded into a macro,
to ensure that we don't enter cutandpaste hell...

I also suggest that the dependent plugins are a separate argument to this
macro, allowing a list of plugins which are to be built / not to be built
to be calculated.

We'd get something like:
GST_CHECK(esd, [enable esound plugins], esdsrc esdsink,
[AM_PATH_ESD(0.2.12, HAVE_GSTTESTLIB=yes, HAVE_GSTTESTLIB=no]


Where the arguments in order mean:

1) library name
2) description for --enable option
3) dependent plugins
4) test - which sets the HAVE_GSTTESTLIB option to indicate if lib
   is present.

There may be others needed, and perhaps the macro should be split into two:
GST_CHECK_START(esd, [enable esound plugins], esdsrc esdsink)
AM_PATH_ESD(0.2.12, HAVE_GSTTESTLIB=yes, HAVE_GSTTESTLIB=no)
GST_CHECK_END

I havn't time to do this work at the moment, maybe in a few days time I
will, but I thought I'd send this now before anyone commits alot of time to
cleaning up configure.base in a cutandpaste manner.

> Also, I'm tempted to start using shtool (http://www.gnu.org/software/shtool/)
> as a autogen requirement, because it includes several m4 macros that can
> be useful, including visual stuff to make the output of configure more
> useful.

I've not looked at that yet, but I would very much like to improve the
configure output...  From the look of it, it should never be a hard
dependency for developers to fulfill, so I have no problem with it being
required.

-- 
Richard