[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Shall econf append its arguments to end of ./configure invocation?

[Michał Górny]

Hi,

As you haven't expected at all, the PMS is a specific spec which
doesn't document much of common sense. Therefore, the way econf is
currently declared leaves the freedom of adding its arguments anywhere
in the ./configure invocation [1].

By that, I mean that:

    econf --libdir=/lib

could actually result in:

    ./configure --libdir=/lib ... --libdir=<here-goes-default-libdir>

The only option guaranteed to be handled properly is --prefix which is
directly processed by econf.

Why I'm bringing this up? Because of bug #406117. Long story short,
it's mostly about Ciaran having the imagination to let paludis pass
./configure arguments in semi-random order. As a result, default
--disable-dependency-tracking goes after explicit
--enable-dependency-tracking from the ebuild.

Now, what are your thoughts? Shall we fix PMS to explicitly state
the argument order or implement ugly hacks in ebuilds?

[1]:http://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/pms/5/pms.html#x1-13500011.3.3.7
[2]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=406117

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny