🚀 go-pugleaf

   Configure should correctly figure out the options to use, or it has
   a bug.  You should never need to edit the Makefile produced by GNU
   programs which come with configure.

These statements look quite strong to me, too strong in fact!  I would
certainly never expect `configure' to discover all peculiarities and
strangenesses of all systems and installations.  I'm just speaking for
Autoconf, which I know better.  There is a certain amount of ugliness
beyond which GNU configurators should refuse to go.  In these cases,
we should rather let users correct their own system installation,
fiddle with config.status (thus, indirectly editing the Makefile), or
even, in the worst cases, playing with the generated Makefile itself.

As of now, Autoconf generates configure scripts which behave fairly
well for almost all machines I work on.  This is a Good Thing, and am
quite satisfied with it.  This is *far* better than doing all the
configuring job by hand, as was done before.  It is a very helping
tool.  But it does not pretend to do everything everywhere and anyhow.
I feel David Mackenzie has the right attitude on this.

-- 
Franc,ois Pinard        ``Vivement GNU!''        pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
(514) 588-4656                                    ...!uunet!iros1!pinard
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