Re: Adding an external project to autoconf

[Keith Marshall]

On Tuesday 15 September 2009 05:31:04 Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > Could I add a related question:
>
> Yes, but we'd slightly prefer if you started a new thread for a
> new question.

That said, at least this much of your response is right on topic for 
the original discussion...

> > is there a way to have
> > sub-package-specific configure options?
>
> Not easily: the actual option strings as passed to each sub
> configure are the same (modulo --srcdir and --cache-file mangling
> of course).

And this could represent a problem for the OP, (who originally wanted 
to add zlib via AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS).  The problem is that, while zlib 
does provide a configure script, it is substantially incompatible 
with anything autoconf might generate:

  .../zlib-1.2.3$ ./configure --help
  usage:
    configure [--shared] [--prefix=PREFIX]  [--exec_prefix=EXPREFIX]
       [--libdir=LIBDIR] [--includedir=INCLUDEDIR]

It may borrow a small subset of them, but ask it to evaluate any of 
the other GCS standard options which AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS may helpfully 
pass to it, and it chokes:

  .../zlib-1.2.3$ ./configure --build=i686-pc-linux --host=mingw32
  unknown option: --build=i686-pc-linux
  ./configure --help for help

-- 

Regards,
Keith.