This may be a controversial patch, but I think that of all the times I have ever run configure --help without appending "|less" it was either because I piped the output through more or because I forgot to paginate completely.
-- William Pursell diff --git a/lib/autoconf/general.m4 b/lib/autoconf/general.m4 index 986b7af..dc861c3 100644 --- a/lib/autoconf/general.m4 +++ b/lib/autoconf/general.m4 @@ -996,6 +996,12 @@ m4_define([_AC_INIT_HELP], # # Report the --help message. # +if test "$PAGER" && test -n "$ac_init_help"; then + tmp=`mktemp -t base` + trap 'exec >&6; $PAGER $tmp; rm $tmp' 0 + exec > $tmp +fi + if test "$ac_init_help" = "long"; then # Omit some internal or obsolete options to make the list less imposing. # This message is too long to be a string in the A/UX 3.1 sh.
