bug#15297: 24.3.50; Compression of installed .el files should be configurable

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 10:35:59 +0200
> Cc: 15297@debbugs.gnu.org
> From: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org>
> 
> I don't understand what would be the advantage of delaying the
> decision.

I see at least 2:

 1) The default is always the same, no matter how the package was
    configured.  IOW, no need to remember or even care about the
    options passed to the configure script, in order to know what will
    happen by default with compression.

 2) Not introducing yet another obscure option to configure, which
    already has too many of them.

> What additional information does the user have at install
> time that he didn't have at configure time, and that would therefore
> assist him with the decision?

Perhaps you never produced more than one installation from the same
source tree.  I do it all the time: sometimes I install on the same
machine, sometimes for copying the installation to another.  The
end-user system frequently needs different options, because the needs
of the end users are different.

> configure has the additional advantage
> that things are remembered in the config.status file and in Emacs'
> system-configuration-options variable, so you can recreate an
> identical configuration from that.

What do you mean by "recreate an identical configuration"?

> Also, "configure --help" lists what options are available.

Yes, all 75 of them.

> But how would the user discover that there is a GZIP_PROG variable?
> By reading the Makefile? GZIP_PROG is at around line 260, not easy
> to find.

Those few that care will find it out once, and then remember it, like
they remember this new option to configure.