[Libreoffice] --enable-automagic (was: Re: [PATCH] Another Qt/gtk configure patch)

On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 09:10:23AM +0000, Wols Lists wrote:
> In particular, there's a page on the gentoo wiki (I've put a pointer to
> it in our development wiki) that says that automatically enabling things
> can be a packager's nightmare. They've only got to miss a "disable" for

True.

> some weird option they happen to have installed, and next thing they
> know they've shipped a package that depends on this weird option - AND
> DOESN'T DOCUMENT THAT FACT!

This is not a big deal for runtime deps, both rpm and deb have mechanisms to
find out what libs executables/libs need and putting them into Depends.. If you
have a own system, you have to implement such stuff on your own anyways, so...

For build-dependencies you're right, that can get a nightmare. Or you
forget one option, and in a clean chroot the package is not installed -> feature
not there.
Or even worse, you get additional stuff in "unclean" chroots you didn't expect
and maybe don't even want.

> That's why, imho, "disable-automagic" is important (and that's why it's
> called magic not matic :-). If that happens, it's now an upstream bug,
> not a silly packager. And it's easy for us to fix each option as we add
> it, not so easy for them to spot we've enabled something obscure.

Though, but a --enable/--dsiable-automagic is not senseful either.

Grüße/Regards,

René