Re: autoconf will accept a nonexistent compiler as the second one checked

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Stepan Kasal <address@hidden> [2006-03-20 12:00]:
> Well, ./configure _could_ do more sanity checks, but the expense is
> obvious: all the people who pass correct parameters would have to
> wait another few seconds.

Well, I think in this case some more sanity checks are justified
because the few seconds lost checking if CXX exists are certainly
better than all the headache caused by a configure script that "works"
when CXX is bogus or that later fails at some completely unrelated
place, such as in http://bugs.debian.org/357369 - where the error was:

> checking for Boost development files... no
> configure: error: Boost development files not found

Turns out this was because of:

configure:20113: g++-4.0 -c -O2 -D_REENTRANT -fpermissive  conftest.cc >&5
./configure: line 20114: g++-4.0: command not found

This is really not a very nice (an obvious) way to fail.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/