Re: inadvisable to have configure script send me an email when user runs it?

[Miles Bader]

Ed Hartnett <address@hidden> writes:
> Is there some good reason not to do this?

You'll almost certainly piss off a lot of people if you do it, and
make them reluctant to trust you again; you may even end up losing
users.  People don't like their actions to be monitored, unannounced,
especially when it's an activity that's normally local and private
(even if it's innocuous).

Instead, I'd recommend you make the configure script end with a
"report" -- many packages do this -- where it prints out a little
nicely formatted summary of the major configuration decisions, etc.

At the very end of this "report", you can print out a request for them
to run some easy-to-run command  (presumably some script that's in
your package) that will send their build info to your email address.

By making your request noticeable (use liberal whitespace, etc) and
friendly, and the mail-sending procedure very easy, you'll probably
get a reasonable amount of voluntary replies.

But I really, really, wouldn't recommend doing it automatically...

-Miles

-- 
Cat is power.  Cat is peace.