Re: libtool optimization

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Michel Briand wrote:
> You don't see my point. In autogen I want to have a way to select a
> different shell (for configure & libtool). I'm not saying that I'll
> choose a shell that fails to run the tools or that I'll not ask the
> user for the best shell available...

As Ralph detailed earlier, it is possible for the end user to specify 
the shell to use.  It is actually pretty challenging to know which 
shell on a system works since they are often riddled with bugs or 
obscure behavior.  Sometimes it seems like things works but wrong 
results are discovered later.  Even though versions of bash also have 
bugs, it is easier to understand the bugs in one implementation so 
autoconf currently checks for bash first and then sticks with it if it 
is available.

The shell selection functionality is part of Autoconf and some of the 
world's most experienced developers have been involved in designing 
the selection logic.

> Furthermore you seems to indicate that Dash would not run configure ?

In my testing, dash is a real speed daemon and does usually work to 
perform normal package configuration.  However, I learned the hard way 
that wrong things could happen if dash was used by the maintainer of a 
package.

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