config summary output?

[Harlan Stenn]

Some packages (like ClamAV, for example) will output a summary of the
configure "state" at the end of the configure run.

I've also had cases where I've wanted to accumulate some (status)
information that gets displayed in the middle of a configure run and
(also) put it out at the end of a configure run.

The code in ClamAV to do this mostly uses AS_ECHO.

While this is good, I'm also aware that it would be nice to have a
'config.summary' file that contains all of this information.  It could
be this file that is emitted, which would also leave a record of the
status for future reference.

I note that I'd want this to work usefully for nested runs of configure.

I just wanted to start a discussion about this, as I think it would be a
useful "core" function for autoconf.
-- 
Harlan Stenn <address@hidden>
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