requirement for newr packages

[robert hawkin]

running the ./configure script does not seem to take into account whether a 
package can be compiled, simply the version of the package the author of the 
application is using. why cant it use 'locate' instead of pkg-config to find 
the headers, and 'grep' to verify that the function accepts the same number 
and type of parameters.
forgive me if this has been asked before, but i don't want to update all the 
packages on my machine every time I run configure.

secondly, why does configure do the same tests every time? if the result 
returned by:
what OS am I running
 and
has 'CC' -v changed

should really remove the necessity to check everything every time. (checking 
length of command line arguments?!)

I am required to intall pkgconfig, m4 etc, why not 'find-utils'  and keep a 
small database.

thirdly, why perl?

derek.

oysters are better than bicycles

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