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

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 10:25:00AM -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Stepan Kasal <address@hidden> writes:
> > I wanted to say:
> > "I suggest you to install package foo, which can be grabbed from foo.org,
> > in order to proceed with this build."
> 
> Ouch.  That's not how I interpreted your output.  Perhaps we should
> rethink the output format.

definitely.  That's part of the work I hope Hugh will do for us.  ;-)

> > 2) at the end there is only one header "Suggestions:", followed by the
> > list of packages.

> (2) is a nicety, but it isn't crucial.  I don't see that it's worth
> trading generality for.

Sure.  What I'm trading generality for, is that people tend to prefer
simpler macros.  I still see many places where people use AC_ARG_WITH
without AS_HELP_STRING, so I want a specific macro here, perhaps build
on top of a general one.

> > 1) the text is printed twice, first as a NOTICE, and second at the end.

> (1) might be worth doing -- perhaps we could use a list of priorities,
> rather than a single priority, and output N copies of the message if
> the list is length N.  I'm not sure whether it's worth doing, though.

I think it might be better if AC_MSG_NEED called the generalized
AC_MSG_NOTICE twice.  We can also do:

AS_IF([test "x$printed_a_need" = x],
  [AC_MSG_NOTICE([Summary of suggestions:], 1)
   printed_a_need=yes
])

at the beginning of AC_MSG_NEED in order to implement (2).

But I'm not going to do any code, before I someone (Hugh?) contributes
a doc patch, with examples etc.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan Kasal