Re: [Bug-apl] Summary info on configure

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi Blake,

I added a note at then of the configure output. SVN 557.

/// Jürgen

On 03/06/2015 07:04 PM, Blake McBride wrote:

At build time, I would like to know what functionality is missing rather then force me to test every app I have.  To avoid confusion, you get state:

GNU APL can be built, however, due to the following missing libraries, the following functionality will be missing:

    libsqlite-dev           Sqlite interface

    libpq-dev               PostgreSQL interface

    etc.

You may want to use more generic names for the libraries but at least it'll tell us that some functionality is missing.  This is really not a big deal.  It just makes it easier.

Thanks.

Blake

On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 11:23 AM, Juergen Sauermann <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Blake,

liblapack is no longer needed (and ./configure does not check it).
libcurses is not stricly needed - when it is missing then GNU APL works around that (and use of curses is disabled by default).

The two SQL libs (sqlite3 and pq) are not used by GNU APL itself but by the native functions for SQL support.
If they are missing then (the shared libraries for) these native functions are simply not installed.

In summary, if ./configure works then everything is just fine.

i have seen packages with a summary at the end. I found that more confusing than the ./configure output because
one package reported lots of missing things but the binary I was after did still work (initially I didn't even try it, because the
summary led me to the wrong conclusion that the build had failed).

/// Jürgen

On 03/06/2015 02:46 PM, Blake McBride wrote:

Greetings,

When building GNU-APL, the first thing you do is ./configure.  The configure script figures out what type of machine you have and what libraries are present.  Missing libraries are avoided so that the system still builds.  All this is great.  The problem is as follows.

Various GNU APL facilities are eliminated when their required libraries are missing.  The problem is, this largely occurs without notification.  Rather than understanding that certain libraries were missing and that certain features will be missing, the system happily builds regardless.  I'd like to know when I forgot to load a particular library.  I could then decide whether that is fine or I should load the library and rebuild.

What some systems do is the end of the ./configure process prints a short list specifying either that all the libraries were present, or it will show what optional libraries were missing.

For example, a few of the libraries I'd like to know about include:

    libsqlite3-dev

    liblapack-dev

    libncurses5-dev

    libpq-dev

There may be more.

I understand that the massive output of the ./configure script includes this information, but it is lost in all of its other output.  I am suggesting that configure provide a summary of missing libraries at the end.

Thanks.

Blake McBride