Re: doc dirs?

[Russ Allbery]

Guido Draheim <address@hidden> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Wouldn't some sort of general facility for adding a new *dir switch for
>> a given package be better than adding a bunch of new options that very
>> few packages will use (and making --help even longer)?  If the worry is
>> that programs will use inconsistent switch names, we can always put a
>> list of recommendations into the manual.

> just a few thoughts:
> a) the helpscreen lists things like sysconfdir or infodir or sharedstatedir
>    but many packages don't use these. They are just confusing, nothing else.
>    Possibly just there so they can propagate to sub-configures...

Wholeheartedly agreed; they should go away too unless they're actually
used.  It's really annoying that ./configure --help prints out more than a
screen of output when frequently for a trivial package only two or three
of those switches actually do anything at all.

> b) I see packages to put dirpath-settables as --with-htmldir options, or
>    possibly with a different name, e.g. --with-html-dir. It is inconsistent
>    and it should be stopped. We want dist-makers to be able to call all 
>    the ac' configures with a predefined option-set and have unused ignored.

I think those packages that care should use --htmldir; I think that all
switches ending in *dir should be reserved for such things and that there
should be an interface similar to that for --enable and --with switches
for setting up such switches.

And there definitely should be a list of standard switches and a strong
recommendation that packages use one of the standard names rather than
making up their own.

> c) propagate with-options to sub-configure, silently doing it even for
>    unknown options, same with the current set of dirpaths, propagate them,
>    even if toplevel doesn't used them. nice thing, isn't it. Align the
>    functionality of both. Kinda AC_ARG_DIR to be along AC_ARG_WITH (and
>    AC_ARG_VAR)?  Looks easy, but probably isn't...

Exactly.

> d) combine a/c with an underlying fhs/gcs scheme for knownpaths,
>    AC_USE_DIR(synconf sharedstate), don't add it to local subst/help
>    by default, but use the knownpath from the standards if a USE_DIR
>    is seen. b/c means to accept every --*dir silently for sub-configures.

I didn't quite follow that.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>