Re: optional features and AC_ARG_WITH

[Gregorio Guidi]

On Friday 04 February 2005 08:43, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Dan Manthey <address@hidden> writes:
> > On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Braden McDaniel wrote:
> >> Paul Eggert wrote:
> >> > 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*".
>
> Yes, that's right.  Sorry about the confusion.
>
> > Actually, I think --with* is the relevant case here,
>
> OK, but in that case, he did not mean "user-visible features".  Let's
> hear from him to make sure that's what he meant.  (It is a confusing
> area.  :-)

Sorry, I wasn't really clear explaining the problem.
In fact, I wasn't referring to portability/platform issuses, but simply to the 
configure checks to see if a library (or tool) is present on the system, and 
specifically to the case where the library is an optional requirement, that 
can enable an optional feature in the software, if present (case related to 
the AC_ARG_WITH macro, then)

As you correctly said, why advertise another macro when developers already 
forget about using AC_ARG_WITH?
Well, that's a good point. Honestly, I don't know if it would succeed.
On the other hand: currently, if I want to send a patch to a developer to add 
a missing AC_ARG_WITH to configure.ac, I can't just add AC_WITH_ARG, but I 
must also add the logic to deal with all the user specified cases, that is, 
add two or three if statements, almost rewriting all the code.
Since I know literaly hundreds of cases where I would like to send patches 
like this, I would really like that there was an "official standard" so that 
I could just say to the developer: use the AC_ARG_WITH_CHECK macro, and maybe 
send a little patch with the implementation.

Hope it was clearer this time... :)

Gregorio