[TUHS] Re: Building programs (Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

At Fri, 21 Jun 2024 10:34:46 +1000, Alexis <flexibeast(a)gmail.com> wrote: Subject: [TUHS] Re: Building programs (Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register Indeed there is. Nothing new about it either. It's been around for two decades or more. From autoconf.info (with variants going back at least as far as 2002): 7.4.2 Cache Files .... The site initialization script can specify a site-wide cache file to use, instead of the usual per-program cache. In this case, the cache file gradually accumulates information whenever someone runs a new ‘configure’ script. There's a pkgsrc.org package, pkgtools/autoswc, that makes it all work cleanly for NetBSD and other platforms using pkgsrc, caching just the stuff that's known to be invariant (by pre-filling a static cache using a big monster "fake" configure script that covers most of the generic tests) and letting other stuff be handled at runtime. It can be a bit fragile, especially in the "gradually accumulates" way of using it (which is why pkgsrc avoids that), but usually the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of developers who either don't read the Autoconf documentation, or think that somehow they're smarter than Autoconf and the many decades of lore it encodes. -- Greg A. Woods <gwoods(a)acm.org> Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack <woods(a)robohack.ca> Planix, Inc. <woods(a)planix.com> Avoncote Farms <woods(a)avoncote.ca>