On 21 February 2017 at 12:50, Andreas Politz <politza@hochschule-trier.de>
wrote:

> Elias Mårtenson <lokedhs@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > If it is to be shipped as part of ELPA, then a different question
> > emerges: Should I simply add code to the Elisp files that checks if it
> > can find the native library and if not, compile it on the fly? It's
> > doable, but I'd hard to reinvent several wheels to do so. Essentially
> > I'd have to rebuild part of autoconf in Elisp.
>
> Hi, I am the author of pdf-tools and I have a very similar, if not the
> same, problem.
>

I use pdf-tools, and I have definitely seen the same issue there.


> I think your analogy to autoconf is not the right one.  What's needed is
> more like an abstraction over the various systems including package
> manager and possibly naming schemes.  For example on Arch you need to
> install the package krb5 with pacman, while on Debian its probably
> libkrb5-dev and libkrb5 using aptitude and on Windows you'd download
> some installer or whatever.
>

Indeed. The MIT and Heimdal implementations also have some minor
differences that has to be taken into account, making the Makefile more
complex.


> There are various other details to consider. For example make is called
> gmake on BSD, or you need to setup an environment variable
> (e.g. PKG_CONFIG_PATH on macos).
>

I don't use OSX much anymore, so I wasn't aware of that.


> This could be implemented in a neat, small package, your package depends
> on and calls into as part of the installation or first-time-running
> process.
>
> Adding a new system-configuration should be fairly easy.
>
> I've been pondering to write such a thing,
>
> what do you think ?
>

I think that sounds like a great idea. If you build a prototype I'd be
happy to provide whatever assistance I can.

Regards,
Elias