Cached configure?

[Boey Maun Suang]

Hi Greg,

> Hi, I was wondering if there is a way to force ports to use the -C  
> option when running configure.  It would speed up the compilation  
> process a whole lot, and there's no reason for configure to run the  
> same tests over and over, especially during the installing of a  
> single port.

If you're talking about doing this in a Portfile, then, as per the  
portfile(7) manpage, you can use

configure.args "<other_arguments> -C <other_arguments>"

or alternatively

configure.args-append "<other_arguments> -C <other_arguments>"

if you're in a context in which you need to avoid clobbering other  
arguments to configure.  If, for some reason, -C or some other flag  
needs to go before the main set of arguments, you can use  
configure.pre_args(-append), or if it needs to go after the target,  
you can use configure.post_args(-append).

On the other hand, if you're talking about overriding the flags on  
the command line, you can just specify them at the end, e.g.:

sudo port install <port> configure.args="<other_args> -C <other_args>"

I imagine that configure.args-append will also work, but I haven't  
tested it yet (I really should).

I'm curious, however, as to which port or ports you're experiencing  
this problem with, as it seems to me that this might be better  
reported to the upstream maintainers.  Speaking only for myself, I've  
noticed that the various ports related to the Courier project  
(courier-imapd, courier-authlib, maildrop) run a separate instance of  
configure in each subdirectory of the unpacked source, and I don't  
imagine that forcing caching will help in this case, as the cache  
from the previous run of configure won't appear in the directory in  
which the new run of configure occurs.  (I've really been meaning to  
contact them about this too; it's the only project that I can recall  
building where the configure time significantly exceeds the compile  
time.)

Kind regards,


Maun Suang

-- 
Boey Maun Suang (Boey is my surname)
Mobile: +61 403 855 677
Email: boeyms at fastmail.fm