On Mon, Oct 30, 2006 at 10:07:39PM -0800, Mark Mitchell wrote: > I don't believe there's a serious problem with the concept, as long as > "./configure; make; make install" for GMP DTRT. If you can do it for > GCC, you can do it for a library it uses too. > > I would strongly oppose downloading stuff during the build process. > We're not in the apt-get business; we can leave that to the GNU/Linux > distributions, the Cygwin distributors, etc. If you want to build a KDE > application, you have to first build/download the KDE libraries; why > should GCC be different?
We do want to make it as easy as we can make it to allow non-gurus to build from source, because we'll get a lot more testing that way. That said, I agree that an automatic download is inappropriate. However, if we detect at configure time that GMP isn't present, it would be good if the error message printed out enough information to tell the user where s/he can download a working version. We'll save everyone time that way.
