Require `make' when configuring?

Require `make' when configuring?

[Deniz Dogan]

I just downloaded Emacs from Bzr on a newly installed system (Arch 
Linux).  When I did autogen.sh, it told me that I needed automake and 
autoconf.  I downloaded those and everything seemed dandy until the end 
where I noticed I don't have make installed.

Should we add "make" to "progs" in autogen.sh?  Maybe I'm 
misunderstanding something.

Deniz

Re: Require `make' when configuring?

[Paul Eggert]

On 07/29/11 08:38, Deniz Dogan wrote:

> Should we add "make" to "progs" in autogen.sh?

My kneejerk reaction is "no", because autogen.sh is
for the early stages of automatically-generating files
needed for 'make'; it does not use 'make' or 'gcc'
or etc. itself.

It's not practical for autogen.sh to check for all
possible things that can go wrong during
a 'make' (missing headers, libraries, bad compilers, etc.),
and a missing 'make' falls into the category of
"possible things that can go wrong during a 'make'".

Re: Require `make' when configuring?

[Tim Cross]

On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 2:26 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
> On 07/29/11 08:38, Deniz Dogan wrote:
>
>> Should we add "make" to "progs" in autogen.sh?
>
> My kneejerk reaction is "no", because autogen.sh is
> for the early stages of automatically-generating files
> needed for 'make'; it does not use 'make' or 'gcc'
> or etc. itself.
>
> It's not practical for autogen.sh to check for all
> possible things that can go wrong during
> a 'make' (missing headers, libraries, bad compilers, etc.),
> and a missing 'make' falls into the category of
> "possible things that can go wrong during a 'make'".
>
>

I would have thought checking for make and such was the role of
configure? Especially as this is a test that would want to be done
when building from a tarball while autogen.sh is something done only
when building from bzr and you need to generate the configure script.

Tim

Re: Require `make' when configuring?

[Paul Eggert]

On 07/30/2011 08:09 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> I would have thought checking for make and such was the role of
> configure?
Emacs 'configure' could be changed to report the absence of 'make',
but in practice it's rare for 'configure's to do that, partly because
it's rare for builders to lack 'make', and partly because the shell
already does the job satisfactorily by saying "make: command not
found".