> | is there a way to tell configure to check params like --with-foo? > | > | ./configure --foo failes with an error > | ./configure --with-foo doesn't fail ... it just ignores the > | "--with-foo" option. > | > | this might also apply to --enable-foo > | > | ./configure --with-foo should fail with the message, that the option > | called "foo" is not available. > > That's on purpose: in case you are embeded in a huge tree, with a main > configure dispatching arguments to everybody... I have not found a > means to have both this property, and some form of checking. Expect > maybe a simple warning, but we cannot make it an error.
There may be 2 separate issues here: - if a package sees --with-foo and it does an AC_ARG_WITH(foo), it may be perfectly reasonable for the package author to say "I was told to build with foo and foo is not there, I will abort." and code it that way. - if a package sees --with-foo and it does not contain AC_ARG_WITH(foo) then is should be ignored, for the reason given by Akim. The same logic applies to --enable. Now one could, for example, also code --with-fatal-missing-with to control if my first case would be a fatal or not. And that sort of behavior would best come from stock autoconf, as otherwise every package maintainer (or worse, end-user package builders) would have to add that capability. H
