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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

autoconf and libtool wasting time checking for g++ and g77

While the gnu auto tools are certainly the best build system
configurators on the face of the planet, I can't help but be aggrivated
by the AC_PROG_LIBTOOL macro.

Supposedly this macro tells the build system how to configure itself to
link in libraries to a program, and for the most part it does the trick.

However, whenever I run the configure script to set up the build
environment, this macro tests for the presence and usability of a c++
and fortran compiler. It does this regardless of the fact that I am not
using c++ nor fortran and additionally not linking to a library written
in either of those two languages.

Not a big deal but it is certainly a waste of time (which becomes
readily apparent on my vanilla openbsd 386 with 16mb of ram).

Here's hoping unneccessary checks like this can be removed when libtool
2.0 roles into town.

-Ted

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