Re: --help should not require --srcdir

[Eric Blake]

On 07/28/2011 11:05 AM, Sam Steingold wrote:
> > * Eric Blake<address@hidden>  [2011-07-28 10:57:24 -0600]:
> >
> > On 07/28/2011 10:48 AM, Sam Steingold wrote:
> > > this should not happen:
> > >
> > > $ ./configure --help
> > > configure: error: cannot find sources (lispbibl.d) in . or ..
> >
> > While I agree with your sentiment, I can't reproduce it with this
> > amount of information.
>
> how about
> /full/path/to/some/configure

That should always work.

> or
> cp configure /tmp

That's where things fall apart.  A configure file should not be moved in 
isolation from the rest of its project.  Granted, the --help output in 
that case could still be a bit nicer, maybe along the lines of:

configure: error: cannot find sources (lispbibl.d) in . or ..
This configure script is designed to configure the lisp package,
but only works when this script is located in the same directory as
the source code for that package.

Patches for improving the error condition output are welcome.  But as 
most users won't get into that error condition, I don't see it as a 
pressing bug.

> It does not matter that configure is in the current directory.

Correct - it is always possible to run a configure located in some other 
directory (such as VPATH builds, where you do mkdir build, cd build, 
../configure).

> It could have been copied of linked over from the source tree and
> intended to be run by a top-level configure with --srcdir argument.

Huh?  Configure should not be copied or linked over from the source tree 
into the build tree.  It should always be run from the source tree.

> However, there is no reason for any program to report an error when
> given the --help switch, no matter where the program is located.

Yes there is, if the program can do nothing useful in its current 
location.  Just like './configure --help' must also report an error if 
if it encounters a write error trying to output help information to stdout.

> > Can you provide a minimal configure.ac file that reproduces this
> > problem, or even a pointer to the project whose configure.ac is
> > causing this failure to see if the bug is in that configure.ac instead
> > of in autoconf?
>
> hg clone http://clisp.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/clisp/clisp
> cd clisp
> ./configure build-dir
> cd build-dir
> ./configure --help

Why is build-dir/configure being created?  It seems like you should 
instead be be doing:

cd build-dir
../configure --help

since configure should not be copied into build-dir, but left in srcdir.

--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org