Re: config.status has been broken by issue 5780 "Accept GUILE 2 without extra configure options"

[Jonas Hahnfeld]

Am Samstag, den 07.03.2020, 08:54 +0100 schrieb David Kastrup:
> David Kastrup <
> address@hidden
> > writes:
> 
> > If I previously did
> > 
> > GUILE_CONFIG=/usr/local/tmp/guile-1.8/bin/guile-config ./configure
> > ./config.status --recheck
> > 
> > then the Guile configuration was reused.  If I now do
> > 
> > PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/tmp/guile-1.8/lib/pkgconfig ./configure
> > ./config.status --recheck
> > 
> > the configuration information is lost and configure reverts to the
> > system configuration.
> > 
> > In addition, PKG_CONFIG_PATH is not documented in our configuration or
> > with ./configure --help.
> > 
> > How to fix?
> > 
> > A documented option --with-guile-prefix or --with-libguile-prefix that
> > puts up a working configuration might be a reasonably transparent and
> > future-safe option.
> > 
> > Also now I don't think it made sense to _remove_ the GUILE_CONFIG
> > variable: if it's set, it seems worth heeding.  If it's unset, going via
> > pkgconfig may be the right way.  --with-libguile-prefix could pick the
> > right option underneath, checking that it is viable, and prefer using
> > PKG_CONFIG_PATH .
> 
> To put this into perspective: this definitely is a showstopper for
> 2.21.0.  A quick fix would be reverting the whole patch for issue 5780
> in order to get back to a compatible state to what we had previously.  A
> minimum fix would be recovering use of GUILE_CONFIG (when it is being
> specified) in order to get back to the previous state of usability.
> Given that I had several segfaults with GUILE-2.2 in recent days, I also
> strongly lean towards continuing to require --enable-guile2 for getting
> Guile2+.  We can reword the "highly experimental" bit.
> 
> At any rate, INSTALL.txt does not reflect _any_ of these changes.  It
> states
> 
>    • Guile (
> http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html
> ) Use version
>      1.8.8.  Version 2.x of Guile is not currently supported.

I disagree that it's a showstopper for 2.21.0: It's different than
before, true, but it works (if you know how to do it). Why should we
keep honoring environment variables in the configure process just for
the sake of compatibility? guile-config has been deprecated by upstream
in favor of pkg-config, so I think it makes sense to move on.

The documentation can certainly be improved, and I think it has been
requested in the review (this already the second or third time that
this gets lost in our process). But after all, this is supposed to be
an unstable release and serve as a reference point for future
development, right?

Jonas

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