On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Charles Wilson wrote:
> Eric Blake wrote:
> > The autotools wrappers (automake 1.7.9-1, autoconf 2.59-1, and libtool
> > 1.5b-1) all have argument parsing bugs. They are trying to parse every
> > option known to either <autotool>-stable or <autotool>-devel, but fail in
> > several respects.
>
> True.
>
> > First, the wrappers are not robust to new options being added. For example,
> > libtoolize 1.9f_20041024-1 treats --ltdl as a long-option with an optional
> > argument, but the wrapper rejects 'libtoolize --ltdl=libltdl'; likewise
> > aclocal 1.9.2-1 has a --force option which the wrapper rejects.
> >
> > Second, the wrappers do not recognize multiple short options in a single
> > argument. For example, 'automake -fiv' is not treated as equivalent to
> > 'automake -f -i -v'.
> >
> > And finally, the wrappers do not allow for option rearranging, like the
> > underlying tools do. For example, 'automake Makefile --help' does not
> > recognize the help option and complains that no configure.ac file exists,
> > while '/usr/autotool/devel/bin/automake Makefile --help' prints the help in
> > a directory with no configure.ac.
>
> Yes. The reason for all this cruft in the wrappers was to support the
> <stdin> behavior that the underlying tools do: the wrappers grab the
> stuff from stdin, save it to a tmp file, and then re-invoke the actual
> tools -- but they must use slightly different options, and point the
> actual tool to the temp file instead of stdin.
>
> I note that the wrappers used by most linux systems do NOT support this
> feature of the underlying tools.
Ah, but Linux supports /dev/stdin and /dev/stdout. Cygwin, AFAICS,
doesn't.
> I've been thinking for a long time of ditching the current wrappers and
> using something more like the linux distros do -- and sacrificing the
> <stdin> behavior, just like they do.
>
> So here's the question: does anybody actually USE <stdin> with the
> autotools? Does ANYBODY do '<some prog that generates a configure.ac on
> stdout> | autoconf' ?
If they do on Linux, portably, they probably use something like '<some
prog that generates a configure.ac on stdout> | autoconf /dev/stdin'...
> [snip]
> > If this approach is not considered satisfactory, and you really want to
> > maintain the wrappers to know all options of the underlying tool, I can also
> > prepare patches for that approach that know how to split multiple short
> > options and how to rearrange arguments.
>
> Let's wait and see what develops on the "Do you use <stdin> + autotools"
> question. And thanks for your interest and pro-activeness. THIS is what
> opensource development should be like.
HTH,
Igor
--
http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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