[gobolinux-devel] Compile patch to add a post_configure hook

[Michael Homer]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 7:11 PM, Daniele Maccari <gobo.users at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Homer wrote:
>  > On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 2:15 PM, Hisham <hisham.hm at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Michael Homer <michael at gobolinux.org> wrote:
>  >>  > On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Daniele Maccari <gobo.users at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >>  >  > 2008/5/11 Michael Homer <michael at gobolinux.org>:
>  >>  >  >> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 7:29 AM, Daniele Maccari <gobo.users at gmail.com>
>  >>  >  >> wrote:
>  >>  >  >> > Hi all,
>  >>  >  >> > I was trying to create a recipe for openoffice (source) and I ran into
>  >>  >  >> > the
>  >>  >  >> > problem of performing some tasks just in between configure and make,
>  >>  >  >> > which
>  >>  >  >> > isn't possible with the current Compile. I then created this patch which
>  >>  >  >> > simply run a "post_configure" hook, in the same style as other hooks.
>  >>  >  >> > What do you think?
>  >>  >  >> That seems reasonable to me, but you have to update RecipeLint as well.
>  >>  >
>  >>  > > Oh sure, thanks for the tip. Here come the patches (I renamed the Compile
>  >>  >  > one to make it more comprehensible, but it's just the same as the previous).
>  >>  >  Thanks - applied r3325.
>  >>
>  >>  Hey, I thought Compile changes that affected the Recipes API would go
>  >>  through more discussing than that before being applied. The idea of a
>  >>  post_configure hook has been brought up before in the past and I had
>  >>  firmly resisted that, on the grounds of avoiding recipe-type-specific
>  >>  hooks, and that the desire of tweaking things between configure and
>  >>  make are most often the smell of ugly hacks that typically should done
>  >>  in other places (such as fixing configure.ac and adding the
>  >>  declarative rule to rebuild configure, which is way less likely to
>  >>  break between upstream releases).
>  >>
>  >  It may turn out to be necessary to add some wrapper
>  > script anyway, since last time I compiled it it required you to
>  > actually run the build from tcsh.
>  >
>  Mmm, I came across tcsh in the configuration step, but I found an option
>  to let it use bash instead (now I'm stuck at another point though).
>
>  Anyway, could you Hisham please explain your pov a little more (or point
>  me at some previous discussion treating this topic)? Thanks
I'll let Hisham speak for himself, but I think the general point he's
making (and the one that's been discussed before) is that in general,
running something in between configure and make is a hack to fix
something that's been misconfigured (e.g., patching a makefile
post-generation). That sort of situation is better handled by patching
configure.ac to fix the problem at the root, which will probably keep
working between releases and be more robust.

The other objection is that pre_configure() would only apply to
configure recipes, while all the other hooks are general, and that
type-specific hooks are a net bad.

I think that OOo is a case that really does need such a hook: every
other way of doing it is more of a hack. It's not a real autoconf
system, and the configure/bootstrap/build does have to be sequenced. I
don't know of any other way of accomplishing that in Compile as it is,
other than turning it into a manifest.
-Michael