If the compile script is unnecessarily used, then compilation will be even slower. This seems particularly true for the Windows operating system where compilation using libtool already feels like compiling in molasses. It seems that Windows is very slow at executing (fork/exec) new programs.
I'm not saying that the compile script should be used, just that the tests to determine whether it might be needed are run as a matter of course. Looking at the implementation of AM_PROG_CC_C_O, I see that it would need a bit of refactoring to make that happen...
It is much less of a problem if the configure script is a bit larger and runs a bit longer than if the overall compile becomes slower. When the supportive overhead to compile a large C file becomes larger than the time actually spent compiling that large C file then you know that something is wrong. :-)
Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen
