Re: Discrimination

[Reuben Thomas]

2009/8/1 Filippo Giunchedi <address@hidden>:
> On Sat, Aug 01, 2009 at 03:03:25PM +0200, Reuben Thomas wrote:
>> 1. Separate the macros into two groups, those which are single-purpose
>> (broadly speaking, those which don't take arguments), and those which
>> are general purpose. This makes the search problem easier.
>
> can you make some examples of both categories with existing macros? Just to 
> help
> understanding where to draw the line.

Sorry, it was lazy of me not to do this before.

Examples of what I consider general-purpose:

ax_with_prog, ax_c_check_flag (lots of uses), ax_cflags_warn_all
(useful for many projects, not the sort of thing you'd necessarily go
looking for)

Special-purpose:

ax_python (interesting to any python project, but still
special-purpose; can easily find by name, mp_with_curses (more
specialised), ax_boost_* (more specialised still).

Essentially, a macro need not be only for a small audience to be what
I called "special-purpose", but simply to be quite specialised, and,
as I say, typically take no arguments. It can be found immediately by
thinking "I need a macro to do X" and then looking at the names of the
macros.

I think the interesting comparison is between ax_cflags_warn_all and
ax_python: in utility they're quite similar, but whereas you'd go
looking for the latter and find it by name, the former needs to be
made more obvious. (Arguably the problem with ax_cflags_warn_all is
that it should be default behaviour, rather than something that
developers have to find.)

I hope that helps. I agree that the categories are not (yet?) clear-cut.

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