configure -- braindead failure message

Heiko Berges gnubug at bsls.de
Fri Dec 31 01:35:41 CET 2010


Hi,

I'd expect that at least GNU people themself would know how to use
autoconf, espacially how to design the tests and errormessages in 
a way so they resamble the problem:

# (blahblah)
# | #include <gcrypt.h>
# | int
# | main ()
# | {
# | enum gcry_cipher_algos i = GCRY_CIPHER_CAMELLIA128
# |   ;
# |   return 0;
# | }
# configure:7485: result: no
# configure:7516: error:
# ***
# *** libgcrypt was not found. You may want to get it from
# *** ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/libgcrypt/  
# ***

Wrong.

# $ libgcrypt-config --version
# 1.2.0

Too old, probably.  Doesn't know about CAMELLIA, in fact.   But I
will never know, if you use a new feature to test for the existence 
of library.

As always autoconf neither spare time nor diskspace and probably
makes it harder to compile instead of easier (as it really did
eight or ten years ago.)  These days it seems to be a tool to
prevent compilation on systems the developers don't care about.


	regards,
	Heiko




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