Re: handling of missing AR

[Olly Betts]

On 2006-03-29, Brian Gough <address@hidden> wrote:
>   checking for ar... false
> [...]
>   false cru .libs/libutils.a .libs/placeholder.o
>   make[2]: *** [libutils.la] Error 1

If AR defaulted to "$(MISSING) ar" if no ar was found (instead of false), then
no error is given if ar is not found but never used, but the end user gets a
more helpful error if it's not found and is used:

WARNING: `ar' is needed, and is missing on your system.
         You might have modified some files without having the
         proper tools for further handling them.  Check the `README' file,
         it often tells you about the needed prerequisites for installing
         this package.  You may also peek at any GNU archive site, in case
         some other package would contain this missing `ar' program.

The message could be better (the second sentence is wrong), but it's better
than that quoted above.  It could easily be improved too - just add a case for
ar to the missing script with a more specific error.

Cheers,
    Olly