Re: [HACKERS] make install fails in perl5 ...

Tom Lane wrote:
> "Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu> writes:
> > I think you are headed in this direction, but istm that the --with-xxx
> > flags on configure should work for any package at any time. So someone
> > doing an installation can look at the "./configure --help" output and
> > say "I think I want those", and actually have it do the right thing,
> > stopping before it does the wrong thing.
>
> Right, my thoughts exactly. A reasonable person seeing the --with-perl
> configure option would assume that he wants to use it, if he has Perl.
> As things stand, if he's following the recommended install procedure
> he probably can't use it. That's wrong.
>
> > I should be able to override the "--with" settings from configure with
> > my Makefile.custom, so I can reinstall the entire Postgres package just
> > by copying Makefile.custom and rerunning configure without major command
> > line parameters.

Then why use configure at all? Configure is there to do a specific job.
Configuring PostgreSQL to build and install on your machine. Use it to do
that job.

>
> Well, that should be true as long as you also get the subsidiary
> information that configure computes (locations of tclsh and friends, in
> the Tcl case). It is legitimate for configure to compute those because
> they are config info --- what if you have more than one version of Tcl
> installed? You need to be able to specify which one to use.

There are options in configure to let you specify the directory that contains
the tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh. This overides the normal search sequence
configure uses to find the *Config.sh files.

>
> We have two problems here:
>
> 1. Makefile.global ought to make clear which other settings need to be
> made if you want to turn on USE_TCL/USE_TK. This is just
> documentation.

The documentation should make it clear that the Makefile.global file (or any
other file that configure generates) should not be edited by hand. Configure
should be used to change the configuration options!

Of course, this is just my opinion, and like any other philosophical stand so
generate interesting debates :-)

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