Re: CFLAGS/LDFLAGS vs. --with

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:

> What is the general wisdom when deciding whether to add support for 
> a new "-with" vs. just encouraging use of CFLAGS/LDFLAGS on the 
> command line?

A problem with the "-with" approach is that it is impossible to 
achieve the flexibility offered to the user by CFLAGS/LDFLAGS and so 
something is bound to lose.  For example, ordering of options in 
CFLAGS/LDFLAGS can influence which headers/libraries are used if there 
are multiple versions in multiple directories, but the "-with" 
approach hard-codes the ordering in the configure script where the 
user can't do anything about it (other than using CFLAGS/LDFLAGS).

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