I would like to second Dmitry's suggestion. I guess this is not autoconf like, but I like the clear distinction that the imperative "use" makes.
--Richard Dima Karpeyev wrote: > --with-mpi=0 is a command, which is mandatory, and --with-sizeofint=8 > seems to specify an optional parameter. > To me '--with' suggests something optional, so I'd vote for keeping > '--with' to indicate > optional parameters and replace it with '--use' (an imperative) when > specifying mandatory commands. > > How's that sound? > > Thanks. > Dmitry. > > On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote: >> I think a root of the miscommunication between Matt and I with regard to >> --with-mpi-shared is that --with is used for TWO different reasons >> >> 1) --with-mpi=0 --with-x=1 etc are used to indicate we want to turn off/on a >> package. In other words they are COMMANDS to BuildSystem >> >> 2) --with-mpi-shared=1, --with-sizeofint=8 tells BuildSystems FACTS that it >> would normally be figured out by BuildSystem. Usually they are provided on >> the command line because ./configure cannot run compiled programs (using >> --with-batch for example). >> >> I suggest we can the syntax for 2) and consistently use --known-mpi-shared >> --known-sizeofint=8 etc everywhere in help and BuildSystem. It makes things >> much clearer and can prevent loads of confusion. >> >> This is likely not compatible with how autoconf does things. Do they have >> a similar split and different names? Is there anything we can copy from >> their approach? Do we care? >> >> >> What do others think? >> >> Barry >> >> -- Richard Tran Mills, Ph.D. | E-mail: rmills at climate.ornl.gov Computational Scientist | Phone: (865) 241-3198 Computational Earth Sciences Group | Fax: (865) 574-0405 Oak Ridge National Laboratory | http://climate.ornl.gov/~rmills
