Re: Which autoconf for libstdc++

[Phil Edwards <phil at jaj dot com>]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 02:04:12PM -0600, Benjamin Kosnik wrote:
> 
> >I am abandoning 1.8 and trying the last of the 1.7.x releases.  More info when
> >it's available.
> 
> Thanks for keeping me in the loop. 
> 
> I think we should wait on definitive, unifying action untill this is sorted out. 

What would people think about adding two small requirements to the autotools
regeneration process, namely:  you should have a working /build/ tree
beforehand, and that it should be in maintainer mode.  The recommended
supported procedure would be:

1)  Configure with --enable-maintainer-mode.
2)  Build a tree.
3)  Make whatever changes.
4)  cd objdir && make [something]

The reason behind this request is that it's going to be very difficult to
upgrade the tools much farther without having to pass some command-line
options when we do the regeneration.  We've been able to avoid that so far.
And people will forget which options, for which tools, and they'll get
freaky weird error messages.  By putting the options into the files
themselves (specially named automake variables), they will be passed as
needed automatically.

Running the tools by hand will continue to be possible, of course, without
doing any of that.  You'll just have to pass the options yourself.

Opinions?

-- 
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
    - Brian W. Kernighan