Re: grep 2.5: CFLAGS

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Miles" == Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:

Karl> address@hidden (Karl Berry) writes:
Karl> I don't know why, seems like more gratuitious incompatibility on the
Karl> face of it, but I'm sure Akim and crew had a very good reason.
Karl> ("customized values may be lost"?  Why?)

Miles> Then configure can record which env variables were passed to
Miles> configure (if you pass them via the environment, it doesn't
Miles> know which ones are actually used), so it can supply them when
Miles> configure gets run again via `./config.status --reconfig'.

I've seen this assertion before, and I don't think it is quite
accurate.  Autoconf could have been modified so that, e.g., AC_PROG_CC
would have noted that it referenced the CC, CFLAGS (etc) environment
variables.  Things like AC_CHECK_PROG could do the same for $1.  So I
don't see a real technical barrier to this.

I do like the new syntax.  I think it is much more intuitive, since
now it works the same way for configure as for make.  Also it gives a
nice shell-independent way to explain configure invocation to people.
I wish configure had worked this way since the beginning.

However, I think the new syntax and the variable-remembering features
are independent.

Tom