idea about how autotools workflow/usability can be improved

[Martin Olsson]

Hi,

I've just started free software development and I'm learning autotools. While 
trying to
build different free software packages I've found one that I think can be 
improved in
autotools. Basically, every time I want to build a completely new code base I 
go through
this process where I run configure or autogen.sh, it then tells me I need package 
"abc",
so then I install package abc and finally I try running configure/autogen.sh 
again.
Rinse and repeat about 3-10 times depending on the complexity of the code base.

I'd suggest that you by default will instead check all the package requirements 
upfront
and then print a list of all the missing packages directly. This means that the 
user does
not have to re-execute configure/autogen.sh many times, instead it will be 
sufficient in
most cases to run it only twice.

Please put me on explicit CC if you reply to this e-mail because I'm not 
subscribed to
the mailing list itself. Thank you.



                Martin