use_autogen

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 23 December 2017 at 16:38, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> Should we add a "use_autogen" (or "use_autogen_sh") option to MacPorts base?

What about use_bootstrap.sh? (This is one I would need at the moment,
but it's only used in 9 other ports rather than 200.)

I support the idea except that the list could get much much longer and
doesn't seem to scale too much in the sense that we can end up with a
potentially "infinite" list of commands. In that sense I prefer the
idea of explicitly setting autoconf.cmd.

What I don't like is that this removes the dependencies without any
option to enforce keeping the dependencies.

If the port needs something completely different from autotools, we
could add a different command like "use_<somethingelse>" (I'm not sure
what that name should be, but I assume it would allow the port to set
any command that is being run before configure) and make sure not to
reset dependencies for those ports that do specify use_autoconf.

> We already have "use_autoconf", "use_automake" and "use_autoreconf". Each of these add the autoconf, automake, libtool dependencies, and set up the right command to run before the configure phase.
>
> But many projects now include an autogen.sh script that should be run instead. The contents of the script is not standardized but at least the name is. I count over 200 portfiles mentioning autogen.sh.

... that said, I still like consistency much more, so I wouldn't be
strongly opposed to having another commend like use_autogen if others
don't agree with the idea mentioned above.

Mojca