Re: Can metamail be disabled in elm?
Zachary DeAquila writes:
>
> Ah! A good example of what I meant in an earlier post about compile-time
> vs. configure-time options and how some way to handle this is needed.
Agreed, but there is quite a bit of work involved in some packages. Some
need -D options to cc to configure things. Some have a configure script.
You never know what you're getting into.
> How hard would it be to have a set of debianized-source that was in a package
> such that when you set up a package the config scripts would 1) put your
> config stuff in the right places in the source code and then 2) compile the
> source code into binaries and install the binaries in the right place?
That's about what you have now. Unpack the debian source, and either
a) change the makefile, b) change config defaults, or it might be as simple
as running ./debian.rules build, which will run the package's configure
script with appropriate parameters for you.
In my opinion, any package that has options like hostname and support for this
and that and has them as compile time and not in a config file is broken.
Metamail support for elm should be in a config file. I already hacked in the
hostname being in a config file rather than compile time option.
But, if you'd looked into putting things like adding config file options to
elm, you'd realize that you had better things to do. It's a mess.
Although I've heard that the phantom elm 3.0 is rewriting all of that crud.
--
Carl Streeter | "Etiquette-wise, there is no proper time
streeter@cae.wisc.edu | to use the phrase 'It sucks.'" --Dogbert
Just another Perl hacker | "I'm a heartless bastard." --Linus Torvalds
Ask me about Debian/GNU Linux. | http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~streeter/
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