--disable-dependency-tracking

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2009-09-02 01:57:27 -0500, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> They do point out indirectly that not all software supports this
> configure argument. For software that doesn't, your solution is
> fine. But I would not characterize it as a problem with MacPorts to
> be worked around; rather, it's simply a difference in how optipng's
> configure script functions vs. how some other programs' configure
> scripts function. MacPorts has to have some sort of default
> behavior, and the default of including --disable-dependency-tracking
> reflected the best guess on what would work with most software.
> 
> I wasn't sure if there was a specific passage of the How
> Configuration Should Work section of the GNU Coding Standards
> document you wanted us to read. I'm not an expert at Makefiles and
> documents like that are pretty dense. If there was a specific
> passage you felt was relevant to the --disable-dependency-tracking
> option, please point it out.

The GNU Coding Standards don't mention --disable-dependency-tracking
because it is not an option universally recognized. In fact, this is
a specific option defined by automake. Software not based on automake
probably don't have such an option. The exit status of the command

  grep -qe --disable-dependency-tracking configure

should tell you whether the --disable-dependency-tracking is supported
or not. Couldn't MacPorts use that (replacing "configure" by the real
configure script name, if this can be changed) in order to decide
whether this option should be used or not?

BTW, using --disable-dependency-tracking always when supported
(instead of just for universal builds) would make the build behavior
more consistent and the build probably faster (since gcc won't take
time for dependency tracking).

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arénaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)