Re: enable/disable configure options for subpackages

[Bob Rossi]

> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 12:14:44PM +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> > > Of course some hacks are possible:
> > > 1) fiddle with ac_args before AC_OUTPUT.
> > >    Of course this solution may easily break with future versions of 
> > > autoconf.
> > > 
> > > 2) Read what AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS does (how it propagates the arguments), and
> > >    do the same in configure.ac
> > > 
> > > 3) Simply call the embedded configure, and add features from
> > >    AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS only when someone asks for it.
> ...
> > These answers are all very helpful. However, I'm wondering if there is a
> > simple way of sending the --disable-shared option to AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS
> > in a way that will be good with future versions of autoconf.
> 
> I don't know about any documented way.  Any of the above options can be 
> simple.
> 
> > Just wondering if this feature is supported by autoconf?
> 
> That's the hard part.
> No, I don't think this is available from documented options.
> Autoconf and, more importantly, its documentation would have to be enhanced
> to support this.  Do you feel like writing a patch to this effect?
> 
> But a simple hack is much simpler.

Well, I modified the configure script that came with readline to set the
default for shared libs to be NULL. This solves my problem. However, if
you could guide me in a general purpose way, I would not mind adding a
feature like this to autoconf.

> And remember, the developpers run autoconf to build the tarball.  The users
> should just build from this tarball, without any need for Autotools installed.
> So it doesn't mind _that_ much if you are not portabale to other versions of
> Autoconf.

Yeah, this goes double for me, since I put the autoconf files in CVS.

Thanks for all your help,
Bob Rossi