On Wed, 31 May 2000, Keith Bostic wrote:
> I'd like to make a small suggestion for autoconf -- it would be helpful
> in debugging configuration problems if the output that is displayed on
> the screen during configuration:
>
> checking for gcc... cc
> checking whether the C compiler (cc -O2 -g ) works... yes
> checking whether the C compiler (cc -O2 -g ) is a cross-compiler... no
> checking whether we are using GNU C... yes
> checking whether cc accepts -g... yes
> checking for c++... g++
> checking whether the C++ compiler (g++ -O2 -g ) works... yes
> checking whether byte ordering is bigendian... no
>
> were also copied into the config.log output. The problem is that users
> send us the config.log file when configuration fails, but NOT the screen
> output, and so we have to translate from the following:
>
> configure:1027: checking for gcc
> configure:1140: checking whether the C compiler (gcc -O ) works
> configure:1156: gcc -o conftest -O -D_REENTRANT conftest.c 1>&5
> configure:1182: checking whether the C compiler (gcc -O ) is a cross-compiler
> configure:1187: checking whether we are using GNU C
> configure:1196: gcc -E conftest.c
> configure:1215: checking whether gcc accepts -g
> configure:1754: checking whether byte ordering is bigendian
> configure:1772: gcc -c -O -D_REENTRANT conftest.c 1>&5
>
> without knowing what the answer to the question was.
>
> I would also encourage putting the source for all test programs into the
> config.log file too, not just the failed ones. I don't know about other
> folks, but we use config.log for the sole purpose of debugging problems,
> and so the more information we can get in that file, the better off we are.
>
> Thanks, as always, for a great tool.
>
> Regards,
> --keith
Keith makes a good point. I ended up creating my own AC_MSG_LOG
macro that would write a message to the console and the log file
because of this exact problem. I don't see any reason the config.log
should not contain all the output instead of just "checking yes|no".
Mo Dejong
Red Hat Inc.
