Re: --enable-* flags for SWIG directory options?

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 09:40:13PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 09:51:43PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > > These options were introduced in the following commit:
> > > 
> > > commit b2db2c2acf88fc21d844cebb3b58234b93399924
> > > Author: Patrice Dumas <[email protected]>
> > > Date:   2025-07-16 08:29:08 +0200
> > > 
> > >     Integrate Perl SWIG interface in the build system
> > >     
> > > Are these options really useful?
> > 
> > --enable-perl-install-mode allows to change the Perl modules
> > installation directories, using a similar interface to MakeMaker.  I did
> > not have any other idea to give the same interface, which translates to
> > those possibilities for installation.  This looks necessary to me for
> > the installation of Perl modules that are supposed to be regular Perl
> > modules (and not hidden modules, as are the Texinfo::* modules).
> > 
> > Then the --enable-install* actually does the same as --libdir and so on,
> > but for the Perl modules installation directories.  In the default case,
> > these directories are taken from Perl -V, but I think that we need to
> > make them customizable.
> 
> Thanks for explaining.  So as I understand it, it is for installing public
> Perl modules, as would be installed by a MakeMaker build system (a frequently
> used build system for Perl).  In order to match how Perl modules are usually
> installed, these directories should be configurable.  There seemed
> to be a module called Texinfo.pm which was built under tta/swig/perl/
> which is probably what this is for.

Exactly, it is for this module and the associated XS module.  They
implement the SWIG interface in Perl.

> The only suggestion I have to make this slightly tidier is to move the
> options to the end of the --help message to keep them separate from the
> other options.

They are at the end of the tta/configure messages (there is
--enable-year2038 in the end, but it is probably automatically added),
but not of the main configure.  I can have a try to make the two
configure messages more similar.

-- 
Pat