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Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:16:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Charles Wilson <cygwin AT cwilson DOT fastmail DOT fm>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: bugs in autotools wrapper scripts
In-Reply-To: <419FA88B.2010006@cwilson.fastmail.fm>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0411221313100.20353@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <419F9721 DOT 5000808 AT byu DOT net> <419FA88B DOT 2010006 AT cwilson DOT fastmail DOT fm>
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On Sat, 20 Nov 2004, Charles Wilson wrote:

> Eric Blake wrote:
> > The autotools wrappers (automake 1.7.9-1, autoconf 2.59-1, and libtool
> > 1.5b-1) all have argument parsing bugs.  They are trying to parse every
> > option known to either <autotool>-stable or <autotool>-devel, but fail in
> > several respects.
>
> True.
>
> > First, the wrappers are not robust to new options being added.  For example,
> > libtoolize 1.9f_20041024-1 treats --ltdl as a long-option with an optional
> > argument, but the wrapper rejects 'libtoolize --ltdl=libltdl'; likewise
> > aclocal 1.9.2-1 has a --force option which the wrapper rejects.
> >
> > Second, the wrappers do not recognize multiple short options in a single
> > argument.  For example, 'automake -fiv' is not treated as equivalent to
> > 'automake -f -i -v'.
> >
> > And finally, the wrappers do not allow for option rearranging, like the
> > underlying tools do.  For example, 'automake Makefile --help' does not
> > recognize the help option and complains that no configure.ac file exists,
> > while '/usr/autotool/devel/bin/automake Makefile --help' prints the help in
> > a directory with no configure.ac.
>
> Yes.  The reason for all this cruft in the wrappers was to support the
> <stdin> behavior that the underlying tools do: the wrappers grab the
> stuff from stdin, save it to a tmp file, and then re-invoke the actual
> tools -- but they must use slightly different options, and point the
> actual tool to the temp file instead of stdin.
>
> I note that the wrappers used by most linux systems do NOT support this
> feature of the underlying tools.

Ah, but Linux supports /dev/stdin and /dev/stdout.  Cygwin, AFAICS,
doesn't.

> I've been thinking for a long time of ditching the current wrappers and
> using something more like the linux distros do -- and sacrificing the
> <stdin> behavior, just like they do.
>
> So here's the question: does anybody actually USE <stdin> with the
> autotools? Does ANYBODY do '<some prog that generates a configure.ac on
> stdout> | autoconf' ?

If they do on Linux, portably, they probably use something like '<some
prog that generates a configure.ac on stdout> | autoconf /dev/stdin'...

> [snip]
> > If this approach is not considered satisfactory, and you really want to
> > maintain the wrappers to know all options of the underlying tool, I can also
> > prepare patches for that approach that know how to split multiple short
> > options and how to rearrange arguments.
>
> Let's wait and see what develops on the "Do you use <stdin> + autotools"
> question.  And thanks for your interest and pro-activeness.  THIS is what
> opensource development should be like.

HTH,
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total
Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT

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