I didn't want to cross-post. I also sent this message to one of the
software carpentry contest lists. Occasionally I remember my days of
Metaconf hacking, and believe it or not there is still something to
learn from that tool.
>>>>> "Greg" == <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Greg> One of the things that I find frustrating in 'autoconf' is that
Greg> dependencies between configuration tests are not explicit.
FWIW: this is one of the things that Metaconf (the package used to
build Perl-style Configure scripts) does better than autoconf. When
you write a Metaconf test, you include dependencies. Metaconf
extracts these, and builds a Makefile that is used to build the
resulting Configure script.
In general I don't like Metaconf -- I find it too chatty and I dislike
the (default) interactivity. But this feature is definitely worthy of
emulation.
Tom
