Re: changing the default compilers for autoconf

[Keith Marshall]

On Monday 17 September 2007 13:15, Eric Blake wrote:
> >> For yourself, just get in the habit of using
> >>   .../configure -C CC=cc CXX=CC F77=f77 FC=f95
> >>
> >> or write a config.site file that sets these as defaults once and
> >> for all, for your system; see
> >> <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Site-Defaul
> >>ts.html> for more information.
> >
> > sorry for mailing you directly, but I wasnt getting much response
> > on the mailing list, ...

Perhaps because we just expected you to go ahead on the basis of

> Ralf's advice about reading the autoconf manual and implementing a
> config.site file [which] is most appropriate to your situation.  In
> other words, you DON'T want to alter autoconf itself, rather, you want
> to add a file separate from autoconf, but which autoconf reads at
> startup, that controls how autoconf will behave on your machine.

I concur with the advice, that this is how you should proceed.  Indeed, 
this is an extremely useful hook, supported by autoconf generated 
configure scripts, straight out of the box; I've been using it for some 
time now, in a trivial form, to make the configure process run more 
smoothly on Woe32 build platforms.

Recently, I've adapted it to work on a GNU/Linux build platform, with 
host set for i586-mingw32, and emulating the behaviour I would get on a 
native Woe32 build platform, with MSYS providing the shell.  It's quite 
awesome to see stock, unmodified configure scripts, running on Linux, 
and spitting out config files with embedded paths, where appropriate, 
in the native Woe32 syntax appropriate to the host.

Regards,
Keith.