Re: make --enable-depend the default

On 2013-08-05 17:59:39 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2013-08-01 at 11:10 +0200, Andres Freund wrote:
> >> People, including me, every now and then forget to pass --enable-depend
> >> to configure (when not using my own environment). Which then leads to
> >> strange errors that cost time to track down...
> >
> > One argument against that is that we only support dependency tracking
> > with GCC, so we would have to either fail configure or use a different
> > default depending on the compiler.
> >
> > It's also unreasonable to assume, I think, that just turning on
> > --enable-depend by default will eliminate forgot-a-configure-option
> > mistakes. In most cases, you want to turn on most or all --enable-* and
> > --with-* options to get good build and test coverage.

Part of it is that just about any other project has the default to
enable dependency tracking, so people aren't aware of having to do that.

> Yeah, I have alias dev-configure='./configure
> --appropriate-stuff-for-this-machine' on every system where I work on
> PG. I imagine others do something similar.

I have that on machines I work on regularly as well, but on others where
I don't control everything...

Anyway, ISTM people don't agreee, so let's consider this proposal retracted.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

--
Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services