Re: configure update warning

[John W. Eaton]

On 18-Jun-2008, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 4:05 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
| > On 18-Jun-2008, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
| >
| > | hello,
| > |
| > | please consider this simple patch that makes the configure script emit
| > | a warning if it detects that it is older than
| > | configure.in.
| >
| > The -nt operator for the test utility is not specified by POSIX, so
| > this patch would introduce a potential portability problem.
| >
| > jwe
| >
| 
| Is there an alternative? I think that having this check would spare
| people some trouble.

Why not add rules to the octMakefile.in file to update the configure
script, config.h.in as needed if the prerequesites change?

I think in the past the argument against doing this was that it could
be annoying to have make do this automatically in cases when it is
known that running configure again is not really necessary (for
example, for a change to the configure script that doesn't affect the
current platform, or that was just in the comments, etc.) because
running configure will cause most of Octave to be rebuilt, and that
can take a long time.  But we frequently get questions about builds
failing because people forget to run autogen.sh after updating their
sources.  So maybe it would be better to have the rules in the
Makefile.

If rules are added, I would prefer to have rules that list precise
dependencies and update only what is needed rather than using
autogen.sh to rebuild the configure script and associated files.

jwe