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Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Uh, Jan-Åke?


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Uh, Jan-Åke?
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 14:38:40 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux)

Jan-Åke Larsson <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
>> emacsprefix is not
>> supposed to be an exported variable.  That is the reason why we have
>> in several places the difference in quoting styles:
>> '${datadir}/something' "${emacsprefix}/whatever"
>
> At the time I was unsure whether this was intended or not. I put it in
> since it would do no harm to do so.

It also does nothing useful.  As a minimum AC_SUBST(emacsprefix) would
be necessary for @emacsprefix@ to carry any meaning, not to mention
the AC_SHELL_QUOTIFY junk.

> IIRC texprefix is in latex/Makefile.in?

Incorrect.

> Anyway, see it as a symptom of the opacity of the current configure
> system. If you want me to be able to do some work on it, I'll have
> to put in some work first to make it more transparent, it seems.

That build system variables are usually quoted so as to be expanded at
"make" time (where they are set to some /tmp subdirectory while "make
install" is run by the package builder) is neither our invention nor
the fault of the "current configure system".  That's how rpmbuild and
friends work.

And this has been the case for as long as we have provided RPM files.
And the first version capable of producing RPM files has been written
by yourself.

I would really appreciate it if the system was in a state where people
felt comfortable around it, but it is a bit tiresome to take the blame
for even those things where I am not guilty of doing them all on my
own.

And part of the complexity simply derives from the necessity to have
reasonably robust stuff in the face of directory names like
"D:\My Stupid Dirname Choices\oh no".

We have to get to the state where people can install preview-latex
without thinking.  Because preview-latex is now a part of AUCTeX, and
we can't afford that people will stop installing newer AUCTeX versions
because they can't figure out how to deal with preview-latex.

And that means that stuff must work automatically, without any
investment of thought, and without breaking under idiotic path names.
And yes, this means that there is more complexity involved for the
developer than when he can rely on sane path names and / as a
directory separator.  I am trying my best to wrap the complexity into
a few confined spaces, by providing general-purpose macros and
commenting them.

Reports of experiences indicate that what we tell people: "just do
./configure && make && make install", rarely if ever works out on
platforms except of GNU/Linux.  And on those "foreign" platforms, it
would be particularly important if stuff just worked without thinking,
since people are not used to thinking there.

I can't do much better, sorry.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum




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