Mariano Alvarez Fernandez wrote:
Frank, you know, I dont't like really to add a configure script, because I think it complicates the install instructions and add another thing to maintain, without real advantages to the distribution. Also, stock DJGPP and Mingw users don't install bash, sed and fileutils.
As I said, it's completely optional. A DJGPP user who doesn't install additional tools doesn't want to run it and can just build GRX like before.
About the instructions: If you think they would get too complicated, we can just not document configure there. Those who know about configure scripts will find it, anyway (and I can add some words to the `configure --help' output to make clear that it's optional etc.). I haven't changed anything in the install instructions yet, but that was because I forgot it. Now, if you don't want it, we can just leave them alone (otherwise, I could still write some words about configure for the install instructions).
About "real advantages", we'll probably disagree. I've build GRX from scratch for about 5-10 times now (you probably a lot more), and I think it's a huge advantage to just call configure instead of editing some files each time (even though the latter can be automatized, of course, but it's still much more clumsy).
Probably a new user, doesn't edit makedefs.grx at all and try make -f directly, this is ok. The same user probably will be bewildered with the configure questions.
Questions? There are no questions. Just running configure will set (leave) the defaults and create a Makefile. The configure options only come into play when in the other case they'd have to edit files by hand.
About new users: On DJGPP probably yes, but as I said, most DJGPP users will probably ignore configure and do jsut like before.
On Linux (I doubt whether there are "new users" on other Unix flavours ;-), they'll probably have built some other packages already before trying such a rather complicated build as GRX, so they are familiar with ./configure && make. (And otherwise, again, they can jsut ignore configure.)
So, if you like, we can put a big warning on it "PLEASE IGNORE THIS FILE IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A CONFIGURE SCRIPT IS" ;-), and you can just consider the script a useless file to carry around which everybody ignores. (Well, not really everybody, you know ... ;-)
Frank