>
> Quoth Julian on Sat, Dec 26, 1998:
> > As for exams - whilst I agree, it should be noted that for the most
> > part we are answering papers that we've seen dozens of times before...
>
> And forgot since. Apart from the fact that you keep several
> configurations for several platforms on the disk, apart from the
> fact that you don't have to wait until configure compiles and
> runs tens of programs one after another, apart from the fact that
> there can be lots of lines in "./configure --help" output and you
> must remember which option to give what value on this platform,
> apart from that all, Exim's Makefile is documented really well.
> You won't be able to put all those lines in the configur help
> output.
*blink* I am sorry why can't we put those lines in the --help
output? What is to stop there being a more detailed help document
associated with its use, which most of the people on this will
hardly ever need to refer to, but can be there for people beginning
in the field of exim?
Whilst this may well end up being an academic discussion, you appear
to have biased your opinion of how/what the output from --help
can/should be.
> And I don't like Richard Stallman's phylosophy. He seems to
> think that software must be free, and ultra-fast state-of-the-art
> hardware already is free. Then, we get monstroicities like GNU
> Emacs and "./configure", which burn your processor cycles like
> it's the end of the world, and you won't ever need them again.
I won't defend emacs, I don't use it. However configure is somewhat
different! It is something you will run a few times before compiling
something, and never again. Sure, it eats CPU cycles, but then this
is somewhat avoidable given that it has to be system independant
itself.
> Interactive Perl-style Configure scripts are still better than
> GNU configure, because they check things _before_ asking you
> about them and giving you the defaults.
Odd you should say that, I always set up the non interactive version
myself.
>
> But current Exim Makefiles are better than all of them. They
> just _know_ what the options for this OS are, and the finish
> their job quickly and move over to do the real work.
Err, I am not actually too concerned with the system dependant
aspects of exim. I would be surprised if something useful
couldn't be done with respect to that, but exim is wonderfully
portable as is. I am concerned with the system configuration
part, where paths for log files, for example, are set up. i.e.
the stuff that you do when you edit the makefile.
>
> Vadik.
>
Julian
Unix Admin, Internet Vision
--
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http://www.exim.org/ ***
