Re: libtool, OS X, and GNU ranlib

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, Peter O'Gorman wrote:

> On 10/01/2009 05:04 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > Excuse this top-post.  I continue to believe that this "user error"
> > should be explictly prevented (by a hard configure error) and that very
> > few people will notice a warning message while configure is running.
>
> Hmm, well, ok, I could make it an error, but allow overriding for people who 
> "know what they are doing", maybe by setting a cache var, e.g. ./configure 
> --prefix=/usr lt_cv_darwin_override=yes ? and mention the possibility of 
> using the override in the error message.

This seems like a lot of complexity to me.  First off, someone who 
"knows what they are doing" won't overwrite a necessary build tool. 
Secondly, the person who really knows what they are doing could 'rm' 
the file.

If the Darwin-provided libtool exists, then configure should error out 
if the settings would destroy it, but if it doesn't, or if it is 
already GNU libtool, then configure should not complain.

Of course, it is possible to identify similar situations on other 
systems.  For example, someone could specify a prefix of /usr/ccs on 
Solaris and overwrite the Sun provided linker.

It is much more common for someone to provide a prefix of /usr since 
that is what they are used to under Linux.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/