Re: problems with readline (compilation on mac fails)

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

On Thu, 17 Feb 2011, Ethan A Merritt wrote:

> > Hans-Bernhard Br�ker wrote:
> > On 17.02.2011 22:48, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, February 16, 2011 03:38:13 pm Hans-Bernhard Br�ker wrote:
> >
> > >> That's not really supposed to happen.  There's code in the Makefiles
> > >> that automatically builds everything, including configure itself,
> > >> whenever any of the files it's made from change.
> >
> > > Actually, I do not see any such depency or target in the Makefiles.
> >
> > They're there (see the top-level Makefile, look for am__configure_deps
> > and its uses), but they're disabled.  You actually disabled those
> > yourself, Ethan, when you put the AM_MAINTAINER_MODE macro into
> > configure.in.
> >
> > Now people need to run configure with --enable-maintainer-mode to get
> > back those rules, but since neither ./prepare nor any of the README
> > files mentions this fact, just about everybody, including yourself,
> > missed that.  IMHO that rather convincingly proves that
> > AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is a bad idea, and I suggest we take back that change.
>
> I myself do not care much one way or the other, but if we remove
> AM_MAINTAINER_MODE then I predict we will get complaints in the other
> direction.   Right now anyone who has a working configure file can continue
> to use it even if they don't have autotools installed.

One data-point, FWIW. In my project, gretl.sourceforge.net, we
decided to put the configure script into CVS even though (as
Hans-Bernhard says) as a generated file it doesn't belong there,
strictly speaking. The rationale for this is that given by Ethan:
it lowers the bar for people who want to build the latest and
greatest from CVS but who are not equipped with autotools. Plus,
it's not a very big deal since configure.in changes only rarely.
(I don't speak of configure.am since IMO that level of attempted
automation is evil.)

Allin Cottrell