Re: Is there any way to use ARC in 32-bit?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

David Chisnall wrote:
> Aside from GNUstep itself, there are very few projects using autoconf and 
> GNUstep Make and for GNUstep the autoconf code does a load of redundant work, 
> takes longer to run than the entire build, and doesn't properly inject itself 
> into the generated dependency graph, so you end up having to gmake distclean 
> periodically to get it to work, and when it does rerun itself it forgets all of 
> the configuration options and you end up with a broken build.
yes, that is a bug in gnustep.make. configure caches its option in 
"config.status".
So, if configure changes, one should run:
./config.status --recheck && ./config.status

since gnustep make is broken, I have grown that command in muscular 
memory and retype it before make tries to.
It is very important, because that way you preserve typical options in 
building gnustep base or gui itself (e.g. layout, prefix....) which can 
mess your gnustep configuration.
If make just runs "./configure" like it does, you will loose also trace 
of your previous settings, making a mess.

There is also a way to reuse in sub-projects configure tests run at a 
higher level, I don't remember how thouh.

Someone should indeed try to "patch" this behaviour.

Autoconf is still a slow job, but it would be more convenient.

Riccardo