Re: Autoconf "languages" (was: AC_FOREACH public?)

[Peter Breitenlohner]

On Mon, 24 Oct 2005, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> * Keith Marshall wrote on Sat, Oct 22, 2005 at 01:32:46AM CEST:
> > On Friday 21 October 2005 10:42 pm, Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote:
> > > But you are only using the top of the iceberg. ?Other people
> > > benefit from this clear layering.
> > >
> > > When another user use `autom4te --lang=M4sh' to generate shell
> > > scripts that are not configure scripts, it matters that AS_* and
> > > m4_* are not Autoconf macros, and that m4_forearch is available.
> >
> > Oh, come on!  Who, outside of your core developer team, is *ever*
> > likely to do this?
>
> Not many, probably.
>
> > Where's the documentation to make it accessible to the masses?
>
> Very good point.
>
> > Why would anyone want to do so anyway?  If I want to write a shell
> > script, other than as a configure script, it's *much* more logical and
> > convenient for me to just write directly as such, in the shell's own
> > native language.

Not exactly what was said above, but related:

There are lots of configure.ac's that e.g., do exactly the same thing
for a whole lot of subpackages, and could be written as

        for foo in one two three four etc; do
                <some-$foo-dependent-tests-or-AC-WITH-or-ENABLE-etc>
                AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([$foo])
        done

except that shell variables as arguments to AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS don't work too
well. So instead these configure.ac's have to repeat essentially the same
code many times.

Having a documented AC_FOREACH would allow for a clean solution, somehow
like

        AC_FOREACH([FOO], [one two three four etc], [
                <some-FOO-dependent-tests-or-AC-WITH-or-ENABLE-etc>
                AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS([FOO])
        ])

Peter Breitenlohner <address@hidden>