Bug#235701: xlibs-dev: circular dependency back to itself
Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 11:32:29PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
>> Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:
>>
>> > The autoconf AC_PATH_X and AC_PATH_XTRA macros think X is unavailable if
>> > only x-dev and libx11-dev are installed. In fact, autoconf thinks
>> > they're missing *even if* you specify --x-includes and --x-libraries
>> > arguments to configure.
>> >
>> > This is howlingly incorrect, but I have not had time to write a new
>> > autoconf macro for this, and the autoconf package maintainer(s) have not
>> > yet advised me regarding a workaround.
>>
>> Can you explain why this is suddenly a problem now? It has never
>> been mentioned to me as a problem in years past, so something
>> must have changed either in X or in Autoconf in the meantime.
>
> Well, you *might* say something changed in X...
[...]
> I would like to reiterate my assertion that the AC_PATH_X and
> AC_PATH_XTRA macros are flawed in concept. What exactly does it mean to
> "have X"? There are several shared libraries in the X Window System
> sample implementation.
>
> There should probably be separate checks for libX11, libSM, libICE,
> libXt, and so forth.
If the checks should be broken up into checks for individual
libraries that way, then is there any reason to have special
Autoconf macros at all? In other words, should the packages
simply use AC_CHECK_LIB and/or AC_SEARCH_LIBS for each of libX11,
libSM, libICE, etc. that it needs? You could do this with
Autoconf already, simply by ignoring the current AC_PATH_X*
macros. I could see that there's the possible extra need for a
macro to add /usr/X11R6/lib or whatever to the library search
path.
I don't know X well. Is the above suggestion reasonable or
totally off-base?
--
Ben Pfaff
email: blp@cs.stanford.edu
web: http://benpfaff.org
Reply to: