Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2459 mails)

[Sam Clemens <clemens.sam1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Per Jessen wrote:
> Sam Clemens wrote:
>
> > > > which "configure" is that?
> > > >
> > > > $ which configure
> > > > $
> > > >
> > > > Hmmm... it seems that "configure" is *NOT* a standard command.
> > > >
> > > > What do you think about that?
> > > I think anyone who sees dot-slash-configure and pretends not
> >  >to know what it refers to has lost the focus of the discussion.
> >
> > No...I was driving home a point.
> >
> > Although common, "configure" is a not a standard program
>
> It is usually a script generated by the standard 'autoconf/automake'
> utilities.  I tend to agree with Brian that dot-slash-configure is a
> well-known and fairly standard command - with various exceptions to
> prove the rule. 

And that's part of the point.

Configure is a shell script, not a compiled executable file,
and it doesn't assume to know anything about the environment,
because it's purpose is to test the environment so that a
program knows what models to compile against (i.e. BSD vs
SystemV style differences (most glaring in the strings
library)...whats the name of the C compiler? cc or gcc,
etc....and as alluded to... how big of a buffer is available
to the standard shell(s)?).

It's more of a helper tool than a standard app.

And even if the entire world used only one CPU, it
still couldn't be distributed as a binary... it MUST
be a shell-script, precisely because there is so
much variation in platforms out there.


> /Per Jessen, Zürich

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