CODEWITHSUNDEEP
configureautotools
Ferenc Deak
Ferenc Deak

Reputation: 35418

./configure script should fail on enabling mistyped parameters

I work with an autotools project an trying to add new features to the build system (adding new components, etc). While doing it, strangely I discovered that if I add a bla option to it (in configure.ac), but by mistake call it like:

$ ./configure  --with-blabla

It silently complains that:

configure: WARNING: unrecognized options: --with-blabla

and the configuration process still continues. I would like to stop the process instead if an unrecognized --with is encountered. Is this possible somehow?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 198

Answers (1)

Brett Hale
Brett Hale

Reputation: 22318

Your 'option' will have no effect. In that sense, a warning is sufficient. Matched --with-<package> options are enabled by a AC_ARG_WITH, so while blabla might be ignored now, there's no reason why --with-blabla or --enable-blabla might not be useful in the future.

More to the point: ./configure --help gives a list of valid configure options. It's not about failing with an unrecognized option - which brings us to an important point:

Some packages are built recursively, when a package has several sub-packages, an option may not be relevant to all of them, and yet you want to pass it to the package that does accept the option. In short - I see no reason to disable this behaviour.

Of course, if you really want to, you can invoke autoconf with:

autoconf --warnings=error in generating the configure script.

Upvotes: 1

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