Re: Logging --version

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Apr  3, 2001, Akim Demaille <address@hidden> wrote:

> First here is the result.  Look for --version in there.  Please, tell
> me if you think using --version can be risky, i.e., if running a
> program we AC_CHECK_PROG for is bad.

Well...  Sometimes you just can't run a program you find (think of
cross-compiling).  Sometimes the program doesn't understand --version,
and may just start reading from stdin (so that configure hangs
forever), or doing something totally unexpected.

And then, many times, it just won't do anything useful, and all you'll
get is a message telling the usage of the program, because it doesn't
understand --version.

I'd rather special-case --version so that we only do it when we know
it's a reasonable safe thing to do.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  address@hidden, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        address@hidden, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist    *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me