Re: I got an autoconf big improvement to make :]

[Ralf Wildenhues]

[ dropping config-patches and autoconf-patches as unrelated ]

Hello Itzhak,

Thanks for the suggestion.

* Itzhak Avraham wrote on Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 09:46:46PM CET:
> 
> Lets say I'm starting a program which can't find liblamemp3.o file, if I run 
> the ./configure --search-missing=true option it will look for lib-lame with 
> whereis/which lame it should find it in no time, also, if didn't find, it can 
> use the find / -name "lame" -print option for example.
> It might increase configuration time so it should be disabled by default, but 
> making it enable can save hours of searching each package that couldn't be 
> found by ./configure.

Hmm, are you sure?  I think I've seen systems where 'find /' takes hours
itself.

Even if that weren't an issue in itself, please consider that users may
have several incompatible versions of a library installed somewhere,
that hosts may be multi-ABI (x86_64), that cross-compile libraries would
typically be found as well, and that (for now) last but certainly not
least you typically need to find the header files that match those
libraries you happen to have found.  The latter isn't trivial at all,
even if it may sound so to you.

So no, I don't think this would be an improvement.  Anyway consider
using 'locate' rather than 'find' next time you're looking for
something.  Or, rather, pick your packaging tool of your distribution
and have it look for a package that contains the library in question,
including all dependent libraries.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf