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

[Caolán McNamara]

On Tue, 2012-04-24 at 11:49 +0200, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 of April 2012, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> > On Tue, 2012-04-24 at 10:31 +0200, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
> > > All switches are by default on enable state and we check for the deps.
> > > If the damn deps are not present on the system we switch the feature
> > > off.
> >
> > Some packages do this,
> 
>  Isn't that more like "most packages", actually?

*shrug*, I don't have a sample size, its still a pain in the ass. Even
Gentoo has a page bitching about autoconf automagic dependencies
somewhere.

> 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

Surely all the other micro-level with-system-this-that-or-the-other
should be left to the distro maintainers to work around what they've got
or not in any given release.

If there's other stuff being turned on all the time, surely we can just
default those on.

C.