Re: RFE: configure -> dependency list on exit.

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Thomas Dickey wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng wrote:
>
> > A few weeks ago I wrote to the Gnu coding standards people, with a
> > suggestion that there should be a DEPENDENCIES file, so that
>
> It would be nice if autoconf did that for itself.  I don't recall a "recent" 
> release which satisfied that goal (and noted that problem on this mailing 
> list several times without seeing any result).

Autoconf has no way to know anything about a "package".  It works by 
executing the compiler/linker so it only tests the cumulative result 
of installing "packages".

There is the potential for using a DEPENDENCIES file to display 
intelligent error messages.  For example, failure to find a header or 
library could trigger a semi-intelligent message suggesting that maybe 
the associated package needs to be installed or updated.  The 
suggestion message could be totally wrong though, since failure to 
detect a header or library could actually be due to an earlier error 
in the configuration process (config.log needs to be carefully 
inspected).

In many cases, the same header files or libraries may be delivered by 
multiple packages, which could be confusing.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/