git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Feb 6, 2009, 22:12 UTC
Message-ID
<7vskmr43le.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<20090206192505.GE19494@coredump.intra.peff.net>
Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
Show 6 quoted lines
> Now, in this case, it was only one tweak and other responders have
> already pointed him in the right direction. So just making that tweak
> manually is probably the sane thing to do in this situation.
>
> But I wanted to point out that autoconf is not totally without value
> here.

I am not saying something that strong, either. If autoconf generated configure works _for you_ without hassle, great. Keep using it.

The original message that started this thread was what to do when it does NOT work for you, and my point was in general it is much nicer to point at the knob to tweak from the make invocation command line (or in config.mak) than having you spend time on upgrade autoconf, generate configure and run it.

Fanboys may say that autoconf generated configure is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But let's face it. Honestly, the track record of those people in keeping autoconf part in this project up-to-date has not been all that great. There are things that the generated configure file does not detect nor configure correctly (we had --with-expat patch, and we also saw "the trailing slash in template_dir definition in config.mak.in" discussed fairly recently). You are much better off tweaking known peculiarity of your platform in config.mak, when configure does not work out of box for you.

Previous: Jeff KingNext: Joi Ellis
Message 12 of 31 in “Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'”
  1. Joi EllisFeb 6, 2009
  2. Johannes SchindelinFeb 6, 2009
  3. Joi EllisFeb 6, 2009
  4. Miles BaderFeb 6, 2009
  5. Junio C HamanoFeb 6, 2009
  6. Miles BaderFeb 6, 2009
  7. Junio C HamanoFeb 6, 2009
  8. Miles BaderFeb 6, 2009
  9. Junio C HamanoFeb 6, 2009
  10. Miles BaderFeb 6, 2009
  11. Jeff KingFeb 6, 2009
  12. Junio C HamanoFeb 6, 2009
  13. Joi EllisMar 1, 2009
  14. Björn SteinbrinkMar 1, 2009
  15. Andreas EricssonMar 5, 2009
  16. John TapsellMar 5, 2009
  17. Jeff KingMar 5, 2009
  18. Matthieu MoyMar 5, 2009
  19. Jeff KingMar 5, 2009
  20. Jakub NarebskiMar 6, 2009
  21. Matthieu MoyMar 6, 2009
  22. Johannes SchindelinMar 6, 2009
  23. John TapsellMar 6, 2009
  24. asciidoc, was Re: Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'Johannes Schindelin, Mar 6, 2009
  25. John TapsellMar 6, 2009
  26. Jakub NarebskiMar 6, 2009
  27. John TapsellMar 6, 2009
  28. Björn SteinbrinkFeb 6, 2009
  29. Johannes SchindelinFeb 6, 2009
  30. Björn SteinbrinkFeb 6, 2009
  31. Daniel BarkalowFeb 6, 2009

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.