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Re: Handling of sub-packages by autoconf interfaces
From: |
SF Markus Elfring |
Subject: |
Re: Handling of sub-packages by autoconf interfaces |
Date: |
Fri, 4 Sep 2015 08:00:43 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.2.0 |
> The tool is distributed with the libraries it depends on
> (they are provided as bundles).
This approach is generally fine in principle.
> For each dependency, coccinelle's configure script checks whether the
> library is already installed. If not, the system is prepared to use the
> bundled version.
The configuration interface needs also to be designed in a way so that
a software builder can select the preferred variant.
> This approach does not seem very satisfactory to me.
Interesting …
> For a start, I find it cumbersome to provide the dependencies as bundles
Is it usual that a working version of a needed software component
is distributed together with your evolving tool?
> but I'm not the person making the decisions.
Would any more maintainers like to share their experiences?
> However, any opinion or pointer about software bundling their dependencies,
> pros and cons and the techniques used to do so would be warmly appreciated.
I assume that you are more looking for general solutions which can make
the involved software management a bit easier and safer.
> Then, assuming we continue to bundle the dependencies, it seems to me
> that it would be more coherent to have the configure script of each
> required bundle run by the tool's main configure script.
You can call another configuration script already if a bundle provides one.
> I am aware of the AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS macro, but this seems a bit limited to me.
> For instance it means that the sub-package's configure may find a different
> compiler to use than the one found by the main conigure, which is not good.
Would you like to revive discussions around an issue which is described in
a similar way in the article "Autoconf: AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS With Custom Flags
for Subprojects" by Clemens Lang?
https://neverpanic.de/blog/2014/04/10/autoconf-ac-config-subdirs-with-custom-flags-for-subprojects/
> One other issue is that we bundle the dependencies as .tar.gz archives
> and we would like to be able to extract the archives only for those
> dependencies that will really be needed (because they are not already
> installed on the system).
Did we stumble on similar software management challenges often enough already?
Do any "problems" come from design details like the following?
* How much control have you got on the bundle format for each item?
* Do the involved data formats support the determination of dependencies
without unpacking the available archives completely?
> Can this be achieved somehow with autoconf?
Partly, yes.
The autoconf software is reusing the programming language "M4".
https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/Autoconf-Language.html
It can be extended with libraries as usual.
https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/
Regards,
Markus
- autocon and sub-packages, Sébastien Hinderer, 2015/09/03
- Re: Handling of sub-packages by autoconf interfaces,
SF Markus Elfring <=
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Eric Blake, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Sébastien Hinderer, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Earnie, 2015/09/04
- Re: Handling of sub-packages by autoconf interfaces, SF Markus Elfring, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Ralf Corsepius, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Sébastien Hinderer, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Wookey, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Warren Young, 2015/09/04
- Re: autocon and sub-packages, Sébastien Hinderer, 2015/09/04
- Re: Handling of sub-packages by autoconf interfaces, SF Markus Elfring, 2015/09/04