Re: removed many uses of HAVE_CONFIG_H from gnulib

[Paul Eggert]

Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:

> * Paul Eggert wrote on Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 12:41:51AM CEST:
>> Since nobody needs HAVE_CONFIG_H any more, [...]
>
> What makes you reach this conclusion (for third-party packages, not for
> some well-maintained GNU packages)?

I did a Google search "DHAVE_STDINT_H gnulib".  Admittedly this
isn't an exhaustive search but it's suggestive.

> Why was there a need at one time but not now?

In the early naive days of Autoconf, people thought there'd often just
be one or two symbols defined, so it'd be OK to put them in the gcc
command line.  Now we know better: there are typically dozens, and
nobody wants to see them in "make" output.

> CVS Libtool's libltdl allows third-party user code to decide over the
> naming of the config header file it may share with it (and whether to
> use one), thus the weird usage in lib/argz.c.  I don't see a compelling
> reason to drop this support.

I don't see any real problem leaving it there, but I wouldn't advocate
expanding that approach to the rest of gnulib.  I'd rather keep the C
source code simple.  If there's a real need for renaming config.h for
oddball projects I suppose we can implement that with gnulib-tool, but
I hope it's not necessary.