In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Akim Demaille writes:
>>>>>> "Olly" == Olly Betts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Olly> Thoughts? I'm happy to do the work, but I'd rather not spend
>Olly> time on it and then get told it's not useful.
>
>It is certainly going to be useful. Nonetheless, I think we should
>not hurry. The problem you are addressing is clearly much broader
>than just C++, or even just for the compilers.
I personally need a solution to my current problem (which is that I
can't probe for a C++ compiler without aborting if one's not found)
fairly soon (in the next week say), but that doesn't necessarily mean
that autoconf need adopt it so soon.
OTOH I'm less than keen to have to do the job twice, so if I can
implement it in a more widely useful way that's fine by me.
>I, for one, have also been bugged that Autoconf always picks up a
>candidate, tests it, and then fails.
Agreed.
>I would like to move AC_PATH_PROG_WITH_TEST into Autoconf. I don't
>recall the exact name, but it is a macro written by Ulrich Drepper for
>gettext. This is the right way to go.
Found it - it's actually called AM_PATH_PROG_WITH_TEST.
>In fact, there is a rewriting of the AC_TRY which must happen, let it
>be only for the quoting issues. I think it is also time to provide
>something better than the weird AC_PATH_PROG, AC_CHECK_PROG,
>AC_CHECK_TOOl and the like.
There are a lot of macros performing small variations of the same
task. It does look like it would benefit from being replaced with a
single macro with a clean, flexible interface. Do you have a vision
of what this might be, or do we need to sit down and look at analyse
exactly what each variant does?
I can solve my immediate problem by hacking together my own version of
AC_PROG_CXX, but if I can achieve the same ends and also help clean up
autoconf, that seems better all round.
Cheers,
Olly
