[Rpm-maint] [draft] spec file unification: autotools based projects

[Mark Hatle]

Marc Haisenko wrote:
> 
> And how is that supposed to work ? I would need a way for each spec to tell 
> RPM "I'm now compiling for environment X, grab me the appropiate %configure". 
> I'm cross-compiling to several different architectures, if I were to only 
> cross-compile to one then your suggestions would make sense to me.

RPM already has this capability.. --target=<foo>

This will change the internal value of %{_target} which you can use to 
load alternative version of %configure.

> I don't think this will ever be possible :-) And I don't think that this 
> should be a goal. I just wanted to remind that there ARE situations in which 
> you need to pass cache variables to autoconf and I don't want to "export" 
> them when I need them only for one command (configure).

A good example of why this is needed OUTSIDE of the cross compile world 
is to build a component with intentional limited functionality.  I.e. I 
have a component that checks for pam but doesn't have an --enable-pam or 
--with-pam type switch.  Occasionally the only way to disable it is to 
use ac_pam=no.

--Mark