Re: [Gnash-dev] Questions about autogen.sh

[dolphinling]

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner, school happened.

Rob Savoye wrote:
> dolphinling wrote:
>
> > First, why is this used rather than autoreconf?
>
>   That just runs part of the process. autogen.sh does all the steps
> required to setup the autotools.

As far as I can tell, autogen.sh tests to make sure various programs exist, sets 
up and runs libtoolize, and runs aclocal, autoheader, automake, and autoconf.

According to [1], "autoreconf runs autoconf, autoheader, aclocal, automake, 
libtoolize, and autopoint (when appropriate)". So other than setting up 
libtoolize, they seem to do the same things.

> For example, autogen.sh knows the
> difference between the main version of libtoolize, which have to be
> handled differently.

I haven't looked at the libtoolize stuff much (nor do I have much experience 
with libtool), but why do they have to be handled differently? Is it just 
because of the way gnash is structured or is this true of all projects using 
libtool?

> > Third, is there any point to any of the following, or can they be removed?
>
>   Those lines are testing if various macros are used in the top level
> configure.ac script. If they are used, then that effects what happens in
> generating all the proper files in the right places.

I don't understand this in the context of my mail. Lines 164-172 aren't testing 
if various macros are used, the test for the macros directory and setting -I 
macros always happens, and doesn't really affect generating the proper files, 
and setting conf_flags doesn't seem to do anything.

If this was a reply to the second part of my mail, which reads
> Second, what is the point of the
>      if grep "^AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT" configure.ac >/dev/null; then
>      [...]
> on line 184 and similar on lines 190 and 194, and lines 43, 53, 63, and 72? 
> configure.ac is never changed (is it?) and those strings aren't in it, so that 
> code will never run.

...then my point is that configure.ac never changes outside of actual checkins, 
right? So unless someone is modifying the source (in which case everything is 
moot), the checks are useless.


[1] 
http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/autoconf/autoreconf-Invocation.html

--
dolphinling
<http://dolphinling.net/>