./configure question

[Jonathan Chen]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 05:33:37PM -0500, Denny White wrote:

[...]
> Okay, I see I'm in such a confused state that I appear
> to be confusing others. I had read somewhere that you
> can go into a port dir you want to install, and do
> make extract & then cd into the work dir just created,
> you could do a ./configure with some option afterward
> that would show you all the available arguments/options
> you can include when you configure it before making it,
> instead of reading the makefile. Then, in that dir, you
> do ./configure --arguments --options to get it ready
> to build it the way you want. And, instead of that, you
> can also do ./configure \ which puts you in a shell on
> the next line where you enter all the arguments and then
> exit on an empty line when you're done. Which, btw, works
> for me. I hope this time I've made it more clear. And
> no, I'm not trying to build binutils.

This doesn't work all the time, as the port *may* do some additonal
magic just to get port to build. YMMV. Some ports don't even have a
`configure' script. The best place to look for supported options is in
the Makefile. The porter has already done the hard work. If you want
to know more about the port, you should ask the maintainer of the
port or the list. As it is, we have no context as to what you're
looking at.
-- 
Jonathan Chen <jonc at chen.org.nz>
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