[Geany-Devel] multiterm should be disabled if no valac is found

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-04-30 05:40 AM, Quentin Glidic wrote:
> On 2014-04-27 22:41, Matthew Brush wrote:
>> On 14-04-27 01:08 PM, Colomban Wendling wrote:
>>> Le 27/04/2014 21:24, Matthew Brush a écrit :
>>>> Yeah I guess AM_PROG_VALAC() just issues those warnings instead
>>>> of failing as I'd have expected.
>>>>
>>>> In a perfect world, the generated *.[ch] files would be
>>>> distributed and when compiling (from tarball at least) no Vala
>>>> compiler would be required.
>
> GNOME folks just say that distributing generated files was a bad design
> idea.
>

I can understand this, however not requiring an extra build-time 
dependency where not strictly necessary might improve chances of getting 
distributed (especially ex. on windows, not that multiterm counts :)

>>> That's the very reason why the absence of valac doesn't trigger a
>>> failure (hence disabling the plugin): because tarballs include the
>>> C sources, and then valac isn't required unless you want to change
>>> the Vala source.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what we can do here…  maybe magically detect it's not
>>> a tarball and then require valac?  Not sure.
>>>
>>
>> One not great option would be to check-in the generated source.
>
> Just require this little dependency that Vala is for everyone.

I'm not strictly opposed, but if it saves someone that is using the 
tarball/dist from having to install a bunch of Vala stuff even if they 
have no intention of modifying the original Vala sources, and Valac 
conveniently outputs nice portable C code, then I'm not sure.

> Or consider that Git = non-tarball and do:
>
> if test -d .git -a -z "$VALAC"; then
> AC_MSG_ERROR([valac is required to build from Git])
> fi
>

I like this concept best... if you forced on Multiterm/etc/Vala, and 
you're building from Git, then you need Valac, else soft-fail and just 
use generated C sources from dist, unless explicitly disabled.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush