[wplug] Compiler questions

[Tom Rhodes]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 14:31:54 -0500
Duncan Hutty <dhutty+wplug at ece.cmu.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 12:08, Bill Moran wrote:
> > 3) Aside from compiler optimizations, most software has a number of
> >    compile-time options you can tweak (not all related to performance)
> >    For example, I just recompiled Sylpheed with GnuPG support.
> <snip>
> > 5) Sometimes you can make software work by compiling from source and
> >    telling it the non-standard locations of libraries that would
> >    be otherwise unusable unless you upgraded a lot of other things
> >    and went through a lot of headaches.
> 
> I did grep './configure -' < ~/.bash_history on some of the machines
> that I have been logged into today. I stopped counting the number of
> hits about half a dozen or so.
> 
> I think it would be safe to say that any time you type ./configure -,
> the rest is something along the lines of -prefix=/my/preferred/location
> --other-option-to-make-foo-work=1
> 
> Passing options to configure scripts is just not possible unless you're
> using source. Clearly there has to be a balance. I don't need to
> handcraft options to configure/compiler options to generate each binary
> on my system, on the other hand the chances are that whenever I need to
> do so, I *really* need to do so.

Perhaps I'm odd in the fact that 99% of the stuff I use I do
my best to rip out every single option I won't use?

-- 
Tom Rhodes