Re: "configure --help=recursive" only works in top_srcdir

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Stepan,

* Stepan Kasal wrote on Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 02:45:46PM CEST:
[...]
> Near the top of m4sh initialization, we'd do:
>       case $1 in
>       --help | --help=* | --version ) as_skip_wr_tests=yes ;;
>       esac
> And then put the test which write to cwd inside an
>       if test -z "$as_skip_wr_tests"

Well, one of the write tests is the one for $PATH_SEPARATOR, which may
also be used to get at $as_myself.  One use of $as_myself is to restart
with a better shell.  With a bad shell, we may not be able to go all the
way to --help output at all(?).  (Note that third party code may come
before this; at least Libtool hacks some of its stuff in there.)

> Would it be too crazy to hardwire this into the AS_INIT code?
> The --help and --version option are special: they are defined in the GCS.

Yes but also the GCS requires that these options work whereever they
are passed, and there are several abbreviations that are accepted by
the later configure code.  For example,
  ./configure --bindir=/foo --help=... --datadir=...

should work as expected, and it would strike me as odd if
  ./configure -V

(or --vers) would execute different code than
  ./configure --version

Cheers,
Ralf