Hi Benoit,
* Benoit Sigoure wrote on Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 08:14:12AM CEST:
> Quoting Ralf Wildenhues <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >* Benoit Sigoure wrote on Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 12:17:07AM CEST:
> >>+ system ('rm -rf autom4te.cache');
> >
> >Ah, one bit that is not general: the name of the cache directory may be
> >customized, see `(autoconf.info)Customizing autom4te'. I suppose a nice
> >and clean implementation would have `autom4te --clean' and let
> >autoreconf invoke that. It in turn would remove the cache directory
> >only if caching was enabled and a relative path, but rather not with an
> >absolute path.
>
> After going through the code of autoconf, autoheader and aclocal
> (which seem to be the only toold to directly invoke autom4te) I can't
> see how one could change the cache directory. Ah yes, there is not
> work around: env AUTOM4TE='autom4te --cache=/some/where'.
Well, that, or
cat > ~/.autom4te.cfg <<EOF
## ------------------ ##
## User Preferences. ##
## ------------------ ##
begin-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
args: --cache=AuToM4Te.CaChe
end-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
EOF
See here:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Customizing-autom4te.html>
> I highly
> doubt this would ever happen and would it ever do, I think the user
> (who obviously knows what he is doing) would not like to remove his
> own cache. Moreover it would be fragile because he would have to
> invoke autoreconf --clean with the same environment variable.
Yes I agree that if one sets $AUTOM4TE for one thing we can expect the
user to also set it for --clean. Having ~/.autom4te.cfg customization
is not so uncommon though, there is at least one prominent GNU developer
who has caching turned off. Somebody's experimented with a global cache
a while ago.
> New patch attached with the two minor nits noticed above corrected. I
> haven't done anything WRT `rm -fr autom4te.cache'.
I agree it's not a huge issue, but it would be nice from a code
cleanliness POV: the string autom4te.cache would occur exactly one,
namely in the config file of autom4te, not anywhere else in Autoconf
nor Automake's program code. If you want me to, I can write that bit
(eventually).
Cheers,
Ralf
