Re: Heavy weight deps (was y scaling error)

[Allin C. <cot...@wf...>]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, pl...@pi... quoted:

> >> It's a pity that enable/disable and with/without aren't treated
> >> as synonyms.  How is anyone supposed to remember which one goes
> >> with which option?
> >
> > Not at all.  Just like nobody is supposed to remember the list of
> > available --enable/--disable/--with{,out} options.  That's what
> > ./configure --help is for (./configure --help=short if you already know
> > the generic configure options).

and wrote:
> 
> So no-one is likely to remember the whole list, but accepting we 
> can remember a few we need to include/exclude it would be nice 
> not add to the burden with apparently arbitary on/off option 
> names. Is there a feature here we are missing the point of?

I'm not sure this is totally compelling, but I think the 
traditional distinction in the autoconf context is

* enable/disable is a simple binary feature toggle

* with/without implies inclusion or not of functionality provided
  by a third-party library or app, and implies an optional 
  parameter to "with", namely the path to the third-party
  something, as in

  --with-ssl=/opt/openssl

Allin Cottrell