FreeTDS Development Group

[James K. Lowden <jklowden AT speakeasy.org>]

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002 23:59:00 +0200, "Sven Köhler" <skoehler AT upb.de> wrote:
> > I fixed the first problem a few days ago in revision 1.45 of
> > configure.in:
> 
> is a release planned?
> let's say version 0.61?

Planned, always.  Scheduled, no, not yet.  :)

> > We don't write configure, it is generated by GNU autoconf.  
> 
> i think apache's does it, but i'm not quite sure - so don't mind ...
> 
> i don't think that this a good place for telling people, how much i hate
> 
> configure :-) - so i'll better shut up

Hi Sven, 

I haven't been able to figure out a way to tell autoconf to generate a
configure script that reports unused/invalid parameters.  It seems to
check some things:

$ ./configure --hello
configure: error: --hello: invalid option; use --help to show usage
$ ./configure --with-hello 
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached) /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
...

I agree with you, that in this day and age we shouldn't have to worry
about tools that ignore erroneous inputs.  I get burned routinely because
I keep the iconv library in an unusual place, hence I need
"--with-libiconv-prefix" which seems wired into my brain as
"--with-iconv-prefix".  When I type the latter, configure never complains
and never works.  

Nick's reply was positive, not negative.  If you take the time to mention
to the autoconf team that FreeTDS's configure couldn't check its
parameters, you'll increase by one vote the chance that they'll provide
the means for us to do that.  And, if the feature exists and we just don't
know about it, you increase by a lot the chance that we'll get mail from
them explaining what dolts we're being for not checking.  

Thank you for the bug report.  I hope it's smooth sailing for you from
here on out.  

--jkl