>>>>> "Alexandre" == Alexandre Oliva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Alexandre> On Sep 4, 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Greg A. Woods) wrote:
>> [ On , September 3, 2000 at 16:44:05 (-0300), Alexandre Oliva
>> wrote: ]
>>> Subject: Re: HTML format documentation
>>>
>>> There's no need to introduce knowledge about particular systems in
>>> autoconf: each system can take care of the issue on its own.
>> Ah, no, that's not even remotely practical. How do you expect a
>> zillion different users to all figure this stuff out on their own?
Alexandre> It's not the users, it's the distributors. Each GNU/Linux
Alexandre> distribution could ship with a config.site installed in
Alexandre> /usr/share that would match the definitions used to build
Alexandre> the distribution.
I agree 100% with Alexandre.
I feel uncomfortable with programs which behavior depends upon the
architecture, and this is what you are proposing. This program is
`configure', agreed, but there is no real reason for configure to be a
special case.
I do believe that most people are now used to the precise meaning of
--prefix and the like, and yet they have their shortcuts for
./configure, make, make check etc. I don't think they really need
help. If we change the behavior, we might break some assumptions of
their scripts. Worse yet: we will have several generations of
configure, depending upon the version of Autoconf, which will behave
differently.
This is not helping people IMHO.
