Re: Unneeded PACKAGE_TARNAME in config.h

[Bob Friesenhahn]

Feel free to volunteer to maintain our package for VMS, Visual C++,
and MacOS 9 compilation environments.  These do not use configure so
they won't have your cool macro.  This mix of build environments leads
to major complications when all of the #defines are renamed. :-)

Bob

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Guido Draheim wrote:

> Au contraire, what can be easier than injecting a single macro
> into your configure script? No need to manually edit a myconf.h.in
> file, and to keep it sane along! Sure, one does not need _all_
> the symbols generated, well. - And there's one more thing: people
> that use autoconf are used to set #ifdef HAVE_* things all around,
> and they can switch over just easily. So you come around and turn
> your program into a library (a common way of evolution by the way)
> with all those HAVE_* things around and in the headers, now all
> you need to do is to place #ifdef PKG_HAVE_* things in there instead.
> It couldn't be easier! No brainwork here! How do you beat that? ;-)=)
>
> cheers, guido
>
> Steven G. Johnson schrieb:
> > I would argue that prefixing *every* autoconf #define symbol is the wrong
> > way to do it.
> >
> > When you need to include configuration-specific #defines in an installed
> > library header file, there are typically only a few #defines that you need
> > to install.  Including the 100's of symbols that might be in your
> > config.h.in into your installed header, installed on every system and
> > #included in all sorts of programs you have no control over, is not what
> > you want.
> >
> > What you want is to use config.h internally, and to substitute *only*
> > those definitions that you need into your installed foobar.h.  This is
> > quite easy to do.
> >
> > In your configure.in, do:
> >
> > AC_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h foobar.h)
> >
> > Then, autoheader will generate the full config.h.in for you, with its
> > gazillion #defines, but will not touch foobar.h.in...this latter file you
> > create *manually*, with whatever few #defines that you need for your
> > installed header.
> >
> > Steven
> >
> > Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> >
> >>Why is this functionality not standard in Autoconf?
> >>
> >>Bob
> >>
> >>On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Guido Draheim wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Bob Friesenhahn schrieb:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>The package I maintain has no need for these definitions, and in fact
> >>>>they cause problems for other Autoconf users since my package is a
> >>>>library which includes its config.h as part of the installed header
> >>>>files, and these definitions conflict with similar definitions in the
> >>>>dependent application's config.h.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>That can happen with other config.h definitions as well,
> >>>and (rpm,deb,whatever) packages might disagree about
> >>>their findings of environment issues as it depends on
> >>>what had been installed during configure time on a
> >>>development system as opposed to those parts in the
> >>>target system. Use AX_PREFIX_CONFIG_H for that, I've
> >>>developed it for the exact purpose to install config.h
> >>>safely as part of the library headers and many libary
> >>>makers have picked it up in the last years.
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen