Re: [Fresco-devel] Re: automake for fresco

On Sun, Feb 02, 2003 at 10:06:45PM -0600, Warren Turkal wrote:
> On Saturday 01 February 2003 09:32 pm, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> > > 1. Ability to build in and out of the source tree without
> > > issue (think --disable-sdl and trying to build within the
> > > source tree).
> >
> > hmm, given that the problem stems from a shortcoming in
> > autoconf, which is used by automake, too, how does automake
> > solve this issue ?
> 
> I just checked on this. Errors in configuration propogate up the tree. For 
> instance, if an error is detected in the SDL directory, configure stops with 
> this message:
> 
> configure: error: this package needs SDL to compile and run
> configure: error: /bin/sh './configure' failed for SDL
> 
> The first comes from the sdl directory's configure. The second if from the top 
> level configure.

Yes, this is a good description of the current behaviour.  The problem
is that it's not the correct behaviour -- autoconf is supposed to let
you get _away_ from having to describe all your libraries and such by
hand.  The correct behaviour would be for it to complete without error
iff at least one of GGI or SDL is installed, and otherwise not.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
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