binutils prerequisites (recent zlib version - what else?)

[Ian Lance Taylor]

kevin diggs <diggskevin38@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
>>
>> Unrecognized --with options are ignored.  The difference in the
>>
>> Ian
>>
> Why? Wouldn't it be better to tell the poor, confused user that they
> are configuring up the wrong tree? So that we can go RTFM and get the
> right option (or whine and complain if the desired functionality does
> not exist)?

It would be better in some cases, yes.  However, the gcc and binutils
trees are examples where there is a master configure script at the top
which invokes a range of sub-configure scripts below.  To make that
work, the master configure script needs to pass all --with and --enable
options to the sub-configure scripts.  If configure scripts reject
unrecognized options, then it would be necessary for every configure
script to recognize every option.  Since the sub-projects are maintained
by different groups of people, that is infeasible.

To avoid the problem there is, yes, an option: --enable-option-checking.
It's sort of pathetic to have an option for option checking, since most
people aren't going to be aware of it, but it's the best we have at the
moment.

Ian