Re: configure output summary

2010-11-19 Thread Josip Rodin
On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 09:21:11AM +0200, Johan Meiring wrote:
 I agree that a lot of newbies will not read it, but if _one_ person reads 
 it a month, it will mean less questions on the list!

That's actually the wrong solution to that particular problem. Newbies
should stop compiling whenever they can use binary packages and avoid
the whole issue.

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-19 Thread ironrake
But newcomers aren't that trained yet.

Perhaps you should change your course material?
Sent from Verizon Wireless

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-19 Thread Stefan Winter

 Hi,


But newcomers aren't that trained yet.

Perhaps you should change your course material?


I wasn't referring to my course in particular. It's just one instance 
where I can see how innocent users perceive things when they come 
across them first time. I.e. you should read 'newcomers' as people who 
compile FreeRADIUS for the first time.
Not all these first-timers have previously attended my course, so 
changing my course material doesn't solve the general problem.


Greetings,

Stefan

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Josip Rodin
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 07:53:02AM +0100, Stefan Winter wrote:
 I think it would generally make sense to put a summary output of  
 configure at the end of its run, so that one can easily see which  
 modules will be disabled.

 In an acute case of bash script fiddling, I created the attached proof  
 of concept test.sh script, which recursively goes through all  
 config.log files and

 a) greps all lines with WARNING
 b) greps all lines with silently not building

 and puts these out in massaged human-readable form. Would something like  
 this have any chances of getting included into the tarball? It could run  
 as the very last thing in configure...

I've actually been a bit confused by the notion of having separate autoconf
installations/invocation in multiple subdirectories. The point of that would
seem to be that if you just want to reconfigure and rebuild one particular
part, you can do it.

But who ever does that?

It seems to me that everyone only ever wants a single autoconf instance for
the whole tree, which can generate all the subdirectory makefiles.

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Alan DeKok
Josip Rodin wrote:
 I've actually been a bit confused by the notion of having separate autoconf
 installations/invocation in multiple subdirectories. The point of that would
 seem to be that if you just want to reconfigure and rebuild one particular
 part, you can do it.
 
 But who ever does that?

  Exactly.

 It seems to me that everyone only ever wants a single autoconf instance for
 the whole tree, which can generate all the subdirectory makefiles.

  Ugh.  Even better, use a build system which includes header/library
checking as part of the dependencies.  Waf  others seem to be a good
start here.

  For 2.2.x, I've been looking at getting rid of libtool  libltdl.
All modern systems have dlopen(), so that makes things easier.  Getting
rid of autoconf would be a logical next step.

  Alan DeKok.
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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread John Dennis

On 11/18/2010 08:21 AM, Josip Rodin wrote:

I've actually been a bit confused by the notion of having separate autoconf
installations/invocation in multiple subdirectories. The point of that would
seem to be that if you just want to reconfigure and rebuild one particular
part, you can do it.

But who ever does that?

It seems to me that everyone only ever wants a single autoconf instance for
the whole tree, which can generate all the subdirectory makefiles.



Yeah, I've never quite understood that either, but it works which at the 
end of the day is what matters most even if it seems odd.


If someone ever does decide to work on the build tools I wonder if it 
might make sense to abandon autotools. I've used autotools for years and 
it's been a love/hate relationship. I love it when someone else has done 
the work, but hate it whenever I have to create new autotools 
functionality or it breaks (which sadly is often) and I have to debug 
it. It's baroque complexity is daunting and it often suffers from 
versioning issues.


FWIW, a number of projects I have some involvement with are switching 
over to CMake. It's still to early for me to give a report card on 
CMake, but it's an interesting trend.


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www.redhat.com/carveoutcosts/
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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Josip Rodin
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 08:48:38AM -0500, John Dennis wrote:
 On 11/18/2010 08:21 AM, Josip Rodin wrote:
 I've actually been a bit confused by the notion of having separate autoconf
 installations/invocation in multiple subdirectories. The point of that would
 seem to be that if you just want to reconfigure and rebuild one particular
 part, you can do it.

 But who ever does that?

 It seems to me that everyone only ever wants a single autoconf instance for
 the whole tree, which can generate all the subdirectory makefiles.

 Yeah, I've never quite understood that either, but it works which at the  
 end of the day is what matters most even if it seems odd.

 If someone ever does decide to work on the build tools I wonder if it  
 might make sense to abandon autotools.

I personally have no problem with autoconf per se, configure.ac syntax in
general tends to be fairly clear to me. But having N copies where we only
seem to need 1? That sounds like a problem.

Also I think that this line of reasoning it's apparent that it's odd, few
understand it, yet it works, so let's either keep it or attempt to replace
it completely is problematic in and of itself. We must be able to fully
understand our own code, and the requirements that led to it, in order to be
able to both try to fix the problems in the existing solution *and* to be
able to attempt a successful replacement. If we don't, it's likely that
we're just going to end up repeating old problems and making things worse.

So it would be good if we could first get an authoritative opinion on
whether support for subdirectory reconfiguration is actually necessary,
or if perhaps it's a remnant of some other unrelated idea. Alan?

I've had some experience analyzing auto*-based build systems on other things
I've packaged, which seemed to result in them becoming less obfuscated, so
I could have a crack at this one if it's possible.

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Alan DeKok
Josip Rodin wrote:
 I personally have no problem with autoconf per se, configure.ac syntax in
 general tends to be fairly clear to me. But having N copies where we only
 seem to need 1? That sounds like a problem.

  Yes.  The repetition is annoying.

 Also I think that this line of reasoning it's apparent that it's odd, few
 understand it, yet it works, so let's either keep it or attempt to replace
 it completely is problematic in and of itself. We must be able to fully
 understand our own code, and the requirements that led to it, in order to be
 able to both try to fix the problems in the existing solution *and* to be
 able to attempt a successful replacement. If we don't, it's likely that
 we're just going to end up repeating old problems and making things worse.

  The existing code works (mostly).  That's why it's still using an old
version of libtool  libltld: I tried changing it, it was a PITA, and
it had problems.

 So it would be good if we could first get an authoritative opinion on
 whether support for subdirectory reconfiguration is actually necessary,
 or if perhaps it's a remnant of some other unrelated idea. Alan?

  It's so that the modules are independent of the core.  If you don't
like a module rm -rf the directory.  If you want a new one, drop files
into a subdirectory, and the main configure/build process will find them.

 I've had some experience analyzing auto*-based build systems on other things
 I've packaged, which seemed to result in them becoming less obfuscated, so
 I could have a crack at this one if it's possible.

  If you can make it simpler, OK.

  Alan DeKok.
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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Josip Rodin
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 05:16:03PM +0100, Alan DeKok wrote:
   It's so that the modules are independent of the core.  If you don't
 like a module rm -rf the directory.  If you want a new one, drop files
 into a subdirectory, and the main configure/build process will find them.

OK, that's actually a legitimate requirement. It should be possible to solve
this problem with much less overhead.

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Stefan Winter

 Hi,


when running configure, lots of somewhat important messages scroll by,
like silently disabling something you need :-)

./configure --with-whatever-options | grep WARN

;-)


Yes, I can do that. I even dare say that I can spot WARNINGs while the 
scroll buffer runs by, and thus instantly see what's going wrong (at 
least on my slow-spec'd VMs). But newcomers aren't that trained yet. You 
shouldn't have to tell them every other Linux project does configure, 
but you have to configure | grep WARN - it's odd if you're not used to it.



there are other packages that print out stuff at the end about what
features are not enabled etc - but , being on those mailing lists too,
noone reads that outputeven if you put a whacking great big dragon
in it  ;-)


Exactly these projects were the role model I had in mind. Granted, some 
people will even overlook the necessary information if it is in 
blinkRED/blink. But a summary at the end at least raises chances of 
problems being flagged by the person running configure.


Interesting discussion elsewhere in the thread... a proper solution to 
the problem would indeed be that the recursiveness of configure goes 
away. Much better than running a whacky script, of course!


Greetings,

Stefan

--
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Ingenieur de Recherche
Fondation RESTENA - Réseau Téléinformatique de l'Education Nationale et de la 
Recherche
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L-1359 Luxembourg

Tel: +352 424409 1
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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-18 Thread Johan Meiring

On 2010/11/19 08:55 AM, Stefan Winter wrote:


away. Much better than running a whacky script, of course!



I feel that adding the script cannot do any harm whatsoever.

I agree that a lot of newbies will not read it, but if _one_ person reads it 
a month, it will mean less questions on the list!


Cheers,

--


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Cape PC Services CC
Tel: (021) 883-8271
Fax: (021) 886-7782

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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-17 Thread Alan DeKok
Stefan Winter wrote:
 when running configure, lots of somewhat important messages scroll by,
 like silently disabling something you need :-)

  Well... yes.

 An untrained eye may miss these easily, leading to confusion afterwards
 (I'm currently running a lecture on RADIUS, and pretty much all of my
 students took their time figuring out that they need openssl-devel for
 PEAP to work etc.).

  If it doesn't do SSL, the server prints out large warnings when you
first start it in debugging mode.

 I think it would generally make sense to put a summary output of
 configure at the end of its run, so that one can easily see which
 modules will be disabled.

  See the MODULES entry in the top-level Make.inc file.  That
contains the list of modules which the server tries to build.

  The OPENSSL_LIBS entry in the same file also shows whether or not
OpenSSL is enable.  If it's empty, there's no OpenSSL.

 In an acute case of bash script fiddling, I created the attached proof
 of concept test.sh script, which recursively goes through all
 config.log files and
 
 a) greps all lines with WARNING
 b) greps all lines with silently not building

  grep -R is a Linux-ism. :(  I still like portable code.

 and puts these out in massaged human-readable form. Would something like
 this have any chances of getting included into the tarball? It could run
 as the very last thing in configure...

  Much simpler, and much less work:

- print out MODULES line from Make.inc
- look for OPENSSL_LIBS.  If it's not there, warn that PEAP, etc.
  will be disabled.

  The only real issue is that the list of modules to build is *large*.
So people might still ignore it when it's being printed out.  But some
simple processing / pretty-printing might make it easier to read.

  Alan DeKok.
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Re: configure output summary

2010-11-17 Thread Alan Buxey
Hi,

 when running configure, lots of somewhat important messages scroll by, 
 like silently disabling something you need :-)

./configure --with-whatever-options | grep WARN

;-)


there are other packages that print out stuff at the end about what 
features are not enabled etc - but , being on those mailing lists too,
noone reads that outputeven if you put a whacking great big dragon
in it  ;-)


alan
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configure output summary

2010-11-16 Thread Stefan Winter

 Hi,

when running configure, lots of somewhat important messages scroll by, 
like silently disabling something you need :-)


An untrained eye may miss these easily, leading to confusion afterwards 
(I'm currently running a lecture on RADIUS, and pretty much all of my 
students took their time figuring out that they need openssl-devel for 
PEAP to work etc.).


I think it would generally make sense to put a summary output of 
configure at the end of its run, so that one can easily see which 
modules will be disabled.


In an acute case of bash script fiddling, I created the attached proof 
of concept test.sh script, which recursively goes through all 
config.log files and


a) greps all lines with WARNING
b) greps all lines with silently not building

and puts these out in massaged human-readable form. Would something like 
this have any chances of getting included into the tarball? It could run 
as the very last thing in configure...


Greetings,

Stefan Winter

--
Stefan WINTER
Ingenieur de Recherche
Fondation RESTENA - Réseau Téléinformatique de l'Education Nationale et de la 
Recherche
6, rue Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi
L-1359 Luxembourg

Tel: +352 424409 1
Fax: +352 422473



test.sh
Description: application/shellscript
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