Re: Manual handling of arguments

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Olaf, and sorry for the delay,

* Olaf Lenz wrote on Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 02:57:40PM CEST:
> 
> I'm experiencing some problems with autoconf 2.61. With autoconf 2.59,
> everything was fine. I'm not sure whether this is a bug in the program
> or just in the documentation.
[...]
> In the script, I'm trying to use the arguments to the configure script
> "$@" directly after AC_INIT was called. Unfortunately, with autoconf
> 2.61, it has already been altered (by some code concerning the
> "config.site"-file). Therefore it is not possible anymore to do some
> option processing manually.
> 
> In the info page "(autoconf)Initializing configure", it is stated:
> ======================================================
> "If your `configure' script does its own option processing, it should
> inspect `$@' or `$*' immediately after calling `AC_INIT', because other
> Autoconf macros liberally use the `set' command to process strings, and
> this has the side effect of updating `$@' and `$*'."
> ======================================================
> 
> I've also noticed that the variable "ac_configure_args" is defined and
> contains a quoted version of the command line options. Is it better to
> use that variable instead? If so, it should better be documented in the
> info page, shouldn't it?

This is a bug.  I'm unsure whether the code should be fixed -- if so,
then it definitely also needs a testsuite addition to ensure that it
isn't inadvertently broken again, as this is just after use of "$@"
was even documented to be done early at all.  (That is to say, I'm in
favor of fixing it.)

There are already other users of $ac_configure_args out there (GCC for
example); I'm unsure whether we should also consider documenting it
(and what can and cannot be expected from it), so we don't break its
used inadvertently either.

Cheers,
Ralf (may come up with a patch eventually)