[Geany-devel] Geany 0.18 (configure.in) has hidden depends on 'which' utility.

[Nick Treleaven]

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:06:38 -0400
Erik Southworth <erik.southworth at gmail.com> wrote:

> To be clear, if we don't have ``which`` it shouldn't error about a c++
> compiler. Also, (1) if we must have ``which``, configure should check for it
> before trying to use it. (2) If we need to check a prog use AC_CHECK_PROG or
> AC_PATH_PROG.
> 
> AFAIK,
> > which is a coreutils utility, so it should work on all systems capable of
> > executing a shell script.
> 
> 
> No. It's not part of coreutils.
> 
> 
> > In fact, I think there are many system scripts which
> > use 'which', so if you don't have 'which', your system shouldn't even work.
> >
> 
> It's that Geany is built in a clean chroot build environment along with only
> the compilers and libs required. ``which`` is not a necessary build
> requirement IMHO. We should have a portable, standard, ``configure`` that
> can build Geany, not a system utility script that calls any arbitrary prog
> and forces users to figure out which ones are needed.
> 
> 
> > Chances are that your $CXX is not defined to a correct variable.
> >
> 
> > >
> > > How about just using a shell builtin, ``hash``, ``type -P`` or just
> > ``eval
> > > $CXX --version`` as a test instead?
> > Does $CXX --version really exist with all C++ compilers?
> >
> 
> Bottom line: we should use portable autoconf macros not random system
> utilities.

If you provide a patch that does it portably we would likely apply it.

Regards,
Nick