Re: Update configure for libpcap

[Jan Stary <hans () stare cz>]

On Jul 11 10:27:50, gharris () sonic net wrote:
> On Jul 11, 2018, at 4:22 AM, Petr Vorel <pvorel () suse cz> wrote:
> > Libpcap's configure script is outdated.
> > Although I'd prefer remove configure from git

+1

> We have CMake support, so, as far as I'm concerned, getting autotools to work on Windows is Somebody Else's Problem, 
> and if Somebody Else cares about it, they can figure out how to make it work (without breaking it on UN*X!)

Exactly.

> I would *personally* prefer that we not have generated configure files in Git and require that autoconf be run (or, 
> if it needs to be run with particular arguments, supply an autopen.sh file and require that it be run); if anybody 
> has an argument against it, let us know.

The ./configure script does need to be generated in the first place.
I would very much preffer we have a simple, hand-written ./configure,
and avoid the GNU auto* hell altogether, much like e.g. the extremely
portable http://mandoc.bsd.lv/ does.

Would the libpcap developers kindly consider this?
I am willing to do the work.

On Jul 11 14:23:56, gharris () sonic net wrote:
> There isn't an "ANSI compiler test".
>
> Currently, libpcap *and* tcpdump use the standard autoconf macro AC_PROG_CC_C99, which checks for flags necessary to 
> implement C99 features.  We require a subset of C99 features to be available in the compiler, so we *can't* remove 
> that.

Is this subset described somewhere? Currently, configure.ac says

        # Try to enable as many C99 features as we can.
        # At minimum, we want C++/C99-style // comments.

> > Linking (shared) is currently not possible though. Fixing that is more complicated as libpcap's Makefiles are 
> > mostly handcrafted (don't use e.g. automake which would handle OS specific things such as the setting proper file 
> > extensions).
>
> Can automake be used with non-GPLed software?

Yes; but the auto* tools generally assume the world is GNU.

> “Automake places no restrictions on the distribution of the resulting Makefile.ins. We still encourage software 
> authors to distribute their work under terms like those of the GPL, but doing so is not required to use Automake.

Ah, you mean "can" as in "is allowed to"?
Getting rid of autotools would also have the welcome side-effect
of getting rid of the GPL restrictions.

        Jan

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