Re: Tricking AC_DEFINE to hide template?

[Lars J. Aas]

Stepan Kasal <address@hidden> wrote:
: Hello.
: 
: To the original question:
: 
: > Is there any way to make config.status know about some define and
: > its value, but not put the template into config.h through AC_DEFINE?
: 
: Perhaps a future versions of autoconf could contain the following
: enhancement:
: 
: The fourth parameter to AC_DEFINE would be the name of the template
: which should hold this define.  (Defaulting to the first one declared
: with AC_CONFIG_HEADERS, of course.)
: 
: What would you think?

It sounds like something I could use.  You could also have a special
keyword to make the template hidden (like '/dev/null') if you prefer to
maintain some headers manually.  You would then have to track which
AC_CONFIG_HEADERS templates that has been mentioned as arg[4] in an
AC_DEFINE invokation to know which ones to autogenerate, because you
can't start autogenerating them all to keep backwards compatibility.
Not very complex, I know, but everything adds up to less maintainable
code, so one should ask if it's really needed and will actually be used,
or if it would mostly just add to the bloat...  I can't answer that
one, but I am content to work with workarounds for now at least.

  Lars J