Re: AC_REQUIRE problems

[Paul Eggert]

Stepan Kasal <address@hidden> writes:

> Or do you propose that make will be run as part of the ./configure call?

Yes.

> Shall we try to write portable makefiles,

Yes.

> Is make indeed suitable declarative language for this purpose?
> Will we have a small file for each macro which was run, in order to tell
> Makefile that it doesn't have to run it again?
> Or will we write the results to a makefile, which will the make have to
> re-read after each test?

No, you'd invoke "make" just once (just as you invoke "configure" just
once).  "configure" would invoke "make" with an appropriate makefile.
The makefile would do all the real work.

Make (1) handles dependencies well, and (2) parallelizes easily.

Autoconf and "configure" are wayyy too complicated; (1) should help
simplify them.  This whole AS_REQUIRE business is just too complicated
and confusing.  Let's deprecate it and just use "make" instead.

Also, "configure" is wayyy to slow.  (2) should help speed it up, when
it is run on multiprocessor boxes.

Admittedly this is a wild idea, but it beats anything else I've yet
seen to attack (1) and (2) in a portable way.