Re: optional features and AC_ARG_WITH

[Dan Manthey]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> Paul Eggert wrote:
> > Gregorio Guidi <address@hidden> writes:
> >>it is very important when creating a package to know in advance what
> >>features will be enabled in the software at the end of the process,
> >>without knowing the details of the host where the package is
> >>building.
> >
> >
> > When you say "features", do you mean "user-visible features"?  That is
> > the subject tof AC_ARG_ENABLE, and you can control them with the
> > appropriate --with* options when you invoke ./configure.
>                ^^^^^^^
> I think Paul meant "--enable*".
>
> (Not to be pedantic, but I think this could be confusing given the context.)


Actually, I think --with* is the relevant case here, since I think the
issue is really about mass-configuring whole swathes of packages all of
which may or may not use some related packages that are or are not present
for their use.  I think the goal is

  for p in $packages; do
    (cd $p;  ./configure $all-my-desired-with-options)
  done

and Gregorio probably wants none of them to puke if they can't play well
with all the options.

The again, if this was the case, we'd be talking about AC_ARG_WITH.

-Dan