-*- outline -*- Things it might be nice to do someday. I haven't evaluated all of these suggestions... their presence here doesn't imply my endorsement. -djm & his successors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Soon ** --target & AC_ARG_PROGRAM Shouldn't *any* `program' be installed as `$target_alias-program' even if AC_ARG_PROGRAM is not called? That would be much more predictable. Ian? ** RedHat's Autoconf page should be removed. ** AC_CHECK_TOOL... Write a test that checks that it honors the values set by the user. * Autoconf 2.52 or later ** Languages Integrate other Fortrans etc. ** AC_CHECK_FUNCS and AC_TRY_LINK_FUNC I have still not understood what's the difference between the two which requires to have two different sources: AC_LANG_CALL and AC_LANG_FUNC_LINK_TRY (which names seem to be inappropriate). Wouldn't one be enough? ** autom4te Eve it out of autoconf. Install support for Autotest, M4sugar, and M4sh. Give a means to trace at the same time as we produce the output. autoconf shall use this feature to make autoheader obsolete, and to produce some kind of input file for automake which should no longer *ever* try to parse Autoconf files. ** Autotest Document it. ** Document AC_COMPILE_IFELSE, AC_LANG_PROGRAM etc. And make AC_TRY_COMPILE etc. obsolete. ** Autoscan macros Can be introduced even before specializing macros. It just means that specializing macros will call them. OTOH, this doubles our work, since specializing macros will save us from additional typing. But the more powerful autoscan is, the better... ** Libtool Define once for all the hooks they need, any redefinition of AC_PROG_CC etc. is way too dangerous and too limiting. The GCC team certainly has requirements too. ** Pentateuch Heck, there is nothing after `Deuteronomy'! We're stuck, but we _must_ update the `history' section. Can't go to `New testament', we might hurt feelings? In addition, it means that the Messiah has come, which might be slightly presumptuous :). Still, someone fluent in English should write it. ** AC_FUNC_GETLOADAVG We must find a solution for this macro which needs to find `getloadavg.c'. ** Revamp the language support We should probably have a language for C89, and C99. We must give the means to the users to specify some needs over the compilers, and actually look for a good compiler, instead of stopping at the first compiler we find. In fact, the AC_CHECK_PROG macro and variations have proved their limitation: we really need something more powerful and simpler too. We must take into account the specific problems of the GCC team. We must extend AC_CHECK_FUNCS in order to use the headers instead of fake declarations as we currently do. Default headers could be triggered on when C99, but not with the other languages? At the end, we should have a simple macro, such as AC_LANG_COMPILER for instance, which is built over simpler macros. Each language support should come with these simpler macros, but each language should follow the same process. We also need to check the srcext which are supported by the compiler. In fact, this macro is also probably the right place to check for objext and exeext. ** AC_PROG_CC_STDC Should be: AC_PROG_CC_ISO? Or even more specific for the ISO version? Should include more tests (e.g., AC_C_CONST etc.)? ** AC_SYS_INTERPRETER Defines $interpval. This is not a standard name. Do we want to keep this? Clarify our policy on those names. ** autoupdate We should probably install the files which do not depend upon the user, just the Autoconf library files. But conversely autoupdate must be opened to user macros, i.e., for instance libtool itself must be able to say that AM_PROG_LIBTOOL is now AC_PROG_LIBTOOL, and have autoupdate do its job on old configure.in. ** AC_LIBOBJ_DECL Decide with the Automake team whether this macro should list only `.c' files, or it should include the `.h' too. For instance the AC_FUNC_GNU_GETOPT macro could provide the three files, likewise for the macro which allows to choose a regex engine. ** Allow --recursive to config.status So that --recheck does not pass --no-recursive to configure. ** AC_PROG_CC_STDC Well, back onto this one :( See Peter for very useful comments on the technology. Should we make this a new language? AC_LANG(ISO C). It would be great to introduce AC_LANG_COMPILER in this release too. * autoconf.texi Move the specific macro documentation blocks into the source files, and use a doc-block extraction/merge technique to get docuemntation into texi-file. This should help avoid bit-rot in the doc, and make the doc easier to update when people add/change macros. The name "autodoc" is probably already taken so we probably need another one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Automake ** missing.m4 The test for a recent missing doesn't hide the error messages from the old missing. ** AU_DEFUN The section for old macros is not completely up to date. For instance, there is still AM_PROG_LIBTOOL. Anyway, since autoupdate takes care of them, it is no longer the role of Automake to handle this. Most should be removed. ** AC_EXEXT, AC_OBJEXT Support should be enabled by default. ** Macros now swallowed by Autoconf. error.m4, obstack.m4, ptrdiff.m4, strtod.m4, termios.m4, winsz.m4. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * m4 ** I18n The error messages for indir and dumpdef are uselessly different. Fix this for translators. ** Tracing `builtin' F**k! --trace FOO does not catch indir([FOO], $@)! ** Tracing builtins GNU M4 1.4's tracing of builtins is buggy. When run on this input: | divert(-1) | changequote([, ]) | define([m4_eval], defn([eval])) | eval(1) | m4_eval(2) | undefine([eval]) | m4_eval(3) it behaves this way: | % m4 input.m4 -da -t eval | m4trace: -1- eval(1) | m4trace: -1- m4_eval(2) | m4trace: -1- m4_eval(3) | % Conversely: | % m4 input.m4 -da -t m4_eval | % ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Autoconf 3 ** Cache name spaces. Cf the discussion with Kaveh. One would like to AC_CHECK_FUNCS(bar) # Do something that changes the environment AC_CACHE_PUSH(foo) AC_CHECK_FUNCS(bar) AC_CACHE_POP in order not to erase the results of a check with another. ** Cache var names should depend upon the current language. ** Use m4 lists? I think one sad decision in Autoconf was to use white space separated lists for some arguments. For instance AC_CHECK_FUNCS(foo bar). I tend to think that, even if it is not as nice, we should use m4 lists, i.e., AC_CHECK_FUNCS((foo, bar)) in this case. This would ease specializing loops, and more importantly, make them much more robust. A typical example of things that can be performed if we use m4 lists instead of white space separated lists is the case of things that have a space in their names, eg, structures. With the current scheme it would be extremely difficult to loop over AC_CHECK_STRUCTS(struct foo struct bar), while it natural and well defined for m4 lists: AC_CHECK_STRUCTS((struct foo, struct bar)). I know that makes a huge difference in syntax, but a major release should be ready to settle a new world. We *can* provide helping tools for the transition. Considering the benefits, I really think it is worth thinking. --akim ** Forbid shell variables as main arguments The fact that we have to support shell variables as main argument forbids many interesting constructions (specialization are not always possible, equally for AC_REQUIRE'ing macros *with their arguments*). Any loop should be handled by m4 itself, and nothing should be hidden to it. As a consequence, shell variables on the main arguments become useless (the main reason we support shell variables is to allow the loop versions of single argument macros, eg, to go from AC_CHECK_FUNC to AC_CHECK_FUNCS). --akim ** Use the @SUBST@ technology also for headers instead of #undef. This requires that acconfig.h becomes completely obsolete: autoheader should generate all the templates. ** Specializing loops. For instance, make AC_CHECK_FUNC[S] automatically use any particular macros for the listed functions. This requires to obsolete the feature `break' in ACTION-IF, since all the loops are to be handled by m4, not sh. ** Faces of a test Each macro can potentially come with several faces: of course the configure snippet (AC_foo), a config.h snippet (AH_foo), a system.h snippet (AS_foo), documentation (AD_foo) and, why not, the some C code for instance to replace a function. The motivation for the `faces' is to encapsulate. It is abnormal that once one has a configure macro, then she has to read somewhere to find the piece of system.h to use etc. The macros should come in a self-contained way, or, said it another way, PnP. A major issue is that of specialization. AC_CHECK_HEADER (or another name) for instance, will have as an effect, via system.h to include the header. But if the test for the header is specific, the generic AS_CHECK_HEADER will still be used. Conversely, some headers may not require a specific AC_ tests, but a specialized AS_ macro. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Make AC_CHECK_LIB check whether the function is already available before checking for the library. This might involve adding another kind of cache variable to indicate whether a given function needs a given library. The current ac_cv_func_ variables are intended to indicate whether the function is in the default libraries, but actually also take into account whatever value LIBS had when they were checked for. Isn't this the issue of AC_SEARCH_LIB? --akim How come the list of libraries to browse not an additional parameter of AC_CHECK_FUNC, exactly like for the headers? --akim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Add AC_PROG_CC_POSIX to replace the current ad-hoc macros for AIX, Minix, ISC, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Support creating both config.h and DEFS in the same configure. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Select the right CONFIG_SHELL automatically (for Ultrix, Lynx especially.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Doc: Centralize information on POSIX, MS-DOS, cross-compiling, and other important topics. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Mike Haertel's suggestions: ** Provide header files containing decls for alloca, strings, etc. ** Cross compiling: *** Error messages include instructions for overriding defaults using config.site. *** Distribute a config.site corresponding to a hypothetical bare POSIX system with c89. ** Site defaults: *** Convention for consistency checking of env vars and options in config.site so config.site can print obnoxious messages if it doesn't like options or env vars that users use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Look at user contributed macros: IEEE double precision math more ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For AC_TYPE_SIGNAL signal handlers, provide a way for code to know whether to do "return 0" or "return" (int vs void) to avoid compiler warnings. (Roland McGrath) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In config.status comment, put the host/target/build types, if used. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ on hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu, configure is getting the wrong answer for AC_CHECK_FUNCS(select). The problem here is that there's severe name space pollution: when conftest.c includes to pick up any __stub macro definitions, it's getting a prototype declaration for select(), which collides with the dummy declaration in conftest.c. (The chain of includes is conftest.c -> -> -> -> -> .) #define $ac_func __dummy_$ac_func #include #undef $ac_func From: kwzh@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Karl Heuer) The test for the isascii function was failing because that function is also a macro. He proposed that the test file look like this: /* Remove any macro definition. */ #undef isascii /* Override any gcc2 internal prototype to avoid an error. */ char isascii(); isascii(); Andreas Schwab ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It would be nice if I could (in the Makefile.in files) set the path to config.h. You have config.h ../config.h ../../config.h's all over the place, in the findutils-4.1 directory. From: "Randall S. Winchester" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In a future version (after 2.2), make AC_PROG_{CC,RANLIB,anything else} use AC_CHECK_TOOL. From Roland McGrath. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ls -lt configure configure.in | sort doesn't work right if configure.in is from a symlink farm, where the symlink has either a timestamp of its own, or under BSD 4.4, it has the timestamp of the current directory, neither of which helps. Changing it to ls -Llt configure configure.in | sort works for me, though I don't know how portable that is _Mark_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here is the thing I would like the most; AC_PKG_WITH(PACKAGE, HELP_STRING, PACKAGE-ROOT, PACKAGE-LIBS, PACKAGE-DEFS, PACKAGE-CCPFLAGS) like AC_PKG_WITH(kerberos,,/usr/local/athena,-lkrb -ldes,[KERBEROS KRB4 CRYPT],include) AC_PKG_WITH(hesiod, [if hesiod is not in kerberos-root add --with-hesiod-root=somewhere] ,,-lhesiod,HESIOD,,) AC_PKG_WITH(glue,,,-lglue,GLUE,,) AC_PKG_WITH(bind,,/usr/local/bind, [lib/resolv.a lib/lib44bsd.a], ,include) After the apropriate checks, the existance of the paths, and libs and such LIBS=$LIBS $PKG-LIBS DEFS=$DEFS $PKG-DEFS CPPFLAGS=$PKG-CPPFLAGS $CPPFLAGS $PKG-ROOT=$PKG-ROOT The cppflags should reverse the order so that you can have; -I/usr/local/bind/include -I/usr/local/athena/include and -L/usr/local/athena/lib -lkrb -ldes /usr/local/bind/lib/libresolv.a as order matters. also an AC_PKG_CHK_HEADER and an AC_PKG_CHK_FUNCTION so one can give alternate paths to check for stuff ($PKG-ROOT/lib for example) From: Randall Winchester ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AC_C_CROSS assumes that configure was called like 'CC=target-gcc; ./configure'. I want to write a package that has target dependent libraries and host dependent tools. So I don't like to lose the distinction between CC and [G]CC_FOR_TARGET. AC_C_CROSS should check for equality of target and host. It would be great if GCC_FOR_TARGET AR_FOR_TARGET RANLIB_FOR_TARGET would be set automatically if host != target. AC_LANG_CROSS_C would be nice too, to check header files etc. with GCC_FOR_TARGET instead of CC Here is one simple test if test "x$host" != "x$target"; then AC_PROGRAMS_CHECK(AR_FOR_TARGET, $target-ar, $target-ar, ar) AC_PROGRAMS_CHECK(RANLIB_FOR_TARGET, $target-ranlib, $target-ranlib, ranlib) AC_PROGRAMS_CHECK(GCC_FOR_TARGET, $target-gcc, $target-gcc, gcc) fi This could be improved to also look for gcc in PATH, but require the prefix to contain the target e.g.: target=m68k-coff -->GCC_FOR_TARGET = /usr/gnu/m68k-coff/bin/gcc From: nennker@cs.tu-berlin.DE (Axel Nennker) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The problem occurs with the following libc functions in SunOS 5.4: fnmatch glob globfree regcomp regexec regerror regfree wordexp wordfree It also occurs with a bunch more libposix4 functions that most people probably aren't worried about yet, e.g. shm_open. All these functions fail with errno set to ENOSYS (89) ``Operation not applicable''. Perhaps Autoconf should have a specific macro for fnmatch, another for glob+globfree, another for regcomp+regexec+regerror+regfree, and another for wordexp+wordfree. This wouldn't solve the problem in general, but it should work for Solaris 2.4. Or Autoconf could limit itself to fnmatch and regcomp, the only two functions that I know have been a problem so far. From Paul Eggert. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Make easy macros for checking for X functions and libraries, such as Motif. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are basically three ways to lock files lockf, fnctl, flock I'd be interested in adding a macro to pick the "right one" if you're interested. From: Rich Salz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Timezone calculations checks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support different default filesystem layouts, e.g. SVR4, Linux. Of course, this can be done locally with config.site. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I wonder if it is possible to get the path for X11's app-defaults directory by autoconf. Moreover, I'd like to have a general way of accessing imake variables by autoconf, something like AC_DEFINE(WINE_APP_DEFAULTS, AC_IMAKE_VAR(XAPPLOADDIR)) Slaven Rezic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cache consistency checking: ignore cache if environment (CC or PATH) differs. From Mike Haertel So we need a general mechanism for storing variables' values in the cache, and checking if they are the same after reading the cache. Then we can add to the list of variables as we come across the need. So far we want LD_LIBRARY_PATH and the internal variables for some of (all?) the args. From: roland@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Roland McGrath) Hmm. That list might include LD_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_RUN_PATH (for solaris), and PATH. I can't think of any others so far. From: friedman@splode.com (Noah Friedman) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every user running X11 usually has a directory like *X11* in his PATH variable. By replacing bin by include, you can find good places to look for the include files or libraries. From: rcb5@win.tue.nl (Richard Verhoeven) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In most cases, when autoscan suggests something, using the search or index command into the Info reader for autoconf manual quickly explains me what the test is about. However, for header files and functions, the search might fail, because the test is not of the specific kind. The Autoconf manual should reflect somewhere all header files or functions (non-specific features, generally) triggering autoscan to generate tests, and tell in a few words what is the problem, and the suggested approach for a solution; that is, how one should use the result of testing the feature. From: pinard@iro.umontreal.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It would be nice if the configure script would handle an option such as --x-libraries="/usr/openwin/lib /usr/dt/lib". Rick Boykin Under Solaris 2.4, the regular X includes and libs and the Motif includes and libs are in different places. The Emacs configure script actually allows dir1:dir2:dir3 -- if test "${x_libraries}" != NONE && test -n "${x_libraries}"; then LD_SWITCH_X_SITE=-L`echo ${x_libraries} | sed -e "s/:/ -L/g"` LD_SWITCH_X_SITE_AUX=-R`echo ${x_libraries} | sed -e "s/:/ -R/g"` fi if test "${x_includes}" != NONE && test -n "${x_includes}"; then C_SWITCH_X_SITE=-I`echo ${x_includes} | sed -e "s/:/ -I/g"` fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What messages should be produced by default, if any? Probably only the few most important ones, like which configuration name was used, whether X or Xt are in use, etc. The specific decisions, and progress messages, should be recorded on the terminal only if --verbose is used. --silent just supresses the "checking for...result" messages, not the "creating FOO" messages. I think the default should be to suppress both. From: Richard Stallman There is no distinction now between important decisions (we have X) vs minor decisions (we have lstat). However, there are probably only a few things you deem important enough to announce and only those few things will need to be changed. Perhaps config.status could be written with comments saying what was decided. From: Roland McGrath ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Another thing I wish for is a macro which figures out which libraries are needed for BSD-sytle sockets. AC_PATH_X already detects this correctly...so it's just a matter of seperating out the socket-related code. From: "Joel N. Weber II" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ in order to use the AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM macro, I have to have install-sh somewhere nearby --- why is this? I have no real reason to distribute install-sh, other than that its absence breaks this code. Shouldn't the above loop be looking for config.sub and config.guess? From: jimb@totoro.bio.indiana.edu (Jim Blandy) adding AC_CANONICAL_HOST to my configure.in script caused all sorts of odd/unexplained errors. Obviously, I had to go get copies of config.guess, config.sub and install-sh from the autoconf distribution, but the error messages and autoconf docs didn't explain that very well. From: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Perhaps also have AC_TRY_COMPILER try to link an invalid program, and die if the compiler seemed to succeed--in which case it's not usable with autoconf scripts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ autoreconf doesn't support having (in the same tree) both directories that are parts of a larger package (sharing aclocal.m4 and acconfig.h), and directories that are independent packages (each with their own ac*). It assumes that they are all part of the same package, if you use --localdir, or that each directory is a separate package, if you don't use it. autoreconf should automatically figure out which ac* files to use--the closest ones up the tree from each directory, probably, unless overridden by --localdir. Also, autoreconf recurses on all subdirectories containing a configure.in, not just those given by an AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS directive. This may not be a problem in practice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------