Re: Update configure for libpcap

[Dagobert Michelsen <dam () opencsw org>]

Hi,

Am 12.07.2018 um 12:07 schrieb Jan Stary <hans () stare cz>:
> On Jul 11 10:27:50, gharris () sonic net wrote:
> > 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.

As a non-Linux distro maintainer (OpenCSW for Solaris) I can tell you that
„hand-written“ configure scripts are the worst you can get as every
package then uses a different approach and it takes a lot of time to
figure out the standard things like compiler selection, flags for preprocessor,
compiler and linker, install relocation, etc. - if this is taken cared of at all.
I don’t say autotools is perfect, by far it is not, but it is a standard and
you need to figure out stuff only once and then reuse it for all packages that
use this tool. I personally maintain ~1600 packages, with manually written
configure scripts this would just not be doable.

Just my 0,02€, there may be more important reasons to change the configure
mechanism, but for me autotools works pretty good for most of the upstream
software I package. Maybe adjusting the configure.ac to be more flexible is
a netter approach than reinvfenting the wheel once again.


Best regards

  — Dago

-- 
"You don't become great by trying to be great, you become great by wanting to do something,
and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process." - xkcd #896

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