Re: environment variable conventions

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, David Lee wrote:
> How should the incoming CPPFLAGS (from the user's environment) normally
> interact with any being set in "configure".  My guess is that configure's
> CPPFLAGS should modify (prepend? append?) any setting from the environment
> rather than simply replace it.

Any configure-script extension of user-configurable variables should 
allow user-provided values to prevail unless they interfere with 
package internals.  The user should always be in control but not so 
much that they shoot themselves in the foot.  Some configuration 
values should be prepended, and some should be appended.  To make 
things easier, most configuration items dealing with package internals 
should be incorporated in the package makefiles rather than configure.

So, if the package has its headers in a subdirectory called "include", 
it must ensure that those headers are used rather than similar (maybe 
older) headers under /usr/local/include or in a path specified in 
CPPFLAGS.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen