On 2004 Oct 6 , at 18.30, Mark Taylor wrote:
> Even if it's possible (and I imagine it would be pretty hard) I think
> that kind of cleverness is a bad idea. There is any number of
> ways you can have environment variables set in such a way as to
> confuse autotools, and starting to try to second-guess them would
> be a never-ending task, as well as interfering with people's possibly
> legitimate use of such mechanisms to influence their config/build.
Hear hear (I swear I'm turning into Mark; but it's only if I think of
coding in vi that I'll _really_ worry).
> I don't think you can do much more than document it, as Norman has.
> It might possibly be worth sticking a prominent note somewhere in the
> README and/or SSN/78 to the effect that if it's all going horribly
> wrong then environment variables could be a good place to look,
> perhaps with a list of ones known/expected to cause trouble.
I've modified those reasonably prominently, and added an `it's all
going wrong' FAQ entry (additions to which are welcome, of course).
Norman
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Norman Gray : Physics & Astronomy, Glasgow University, UK
http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ : www.starlink.ac.uk
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