autoconf (was: Compatability with FreeBSD Ports)

[Claus Assmann]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2005, Dmitri Nikulin wrote:

> For instance, devel/apr (pkgsrc) does not know how to use DFly's
> sendfile, despite being directly inherited from FreeBSD. It thinks it's
> there during configure stage, then freaks out during compile stage. You
> have to manually modify the header and continue the compilation. For
> many users, this is unbearable, and in no case should it be tolerated.

Maybe you can write the proper autoconf macros that can be used by
others?

I maintain two fairly large software packages: one is configured
by a set of include file and some build system which I must maintain
by hand ("Hey, does anyone know whether OS z.y supports feature
x?") and one which uses auto*.  The latter is much easier to maintain
and use provided that I can write/find good autoconf macros that
do the right checks (which can be a real problem, e.g., the tests
for pthread compile/loader options are a hack, the tests for Berkeley
DB are far from trivial, and so on).

I know of the autoconf repository, but those macros aren't as good
as they could/should be :-(  If someone knows a better source for
autoconf macros please let me know.