Re: libtool optimization

[Michel Briand]

Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> - Wed, 22 Oct 2008
09:35:26 -0500 (CDT)

>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.
>

I agree with that. 

The good way is to give the choice for a quicker shell, given that it
will not break the scripts. Adding an option to choose the shell that
would be easily understandable by average user.

>> 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.
>

Having tested with /bin/dash, I've noted that I do not want to use
this kind of construct in configure.ac:

VAR+="val"

It doesn't work with dash...

Cheers,
Michel