--disable-dependency-tracking

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 1, 2009, at 19:26, vinc17 at macports.org wrote:

> Revision: 56752
>          http://trac.macports.org/changeset/56752
> Author:   vinc17 at macports.org
> Date:     2009-09-01 17:26:55 -0700 (Tue, 01 Sep 2009)
> Log Message:
> -----------
> optipng: workaround for problem with MacPorts 1.8.0, which adds
> the --disable-dependency-tracking configure option with the
> universal variant, even though this option is not standard:
>  http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Configuration
> Closes #21002.

As I recall, all versions of MacPorts that have had a universal  
variant have added the --disable-dependency-tracking configure  
argument in that variant, because Apple shows the use of that option  
in their technote on how to build universal binaries of configure- 
based software:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2005/tn2137.html

They do point out indirectly that not all software supports this  
configure argument. For software that doesn't, your solution is fine.  
But I would not characterize it as a problem with MacPorts to be  
worked around; rather, it's simply a difference in how optipng's  
configure script functions vs. how some other programs' configure  
scripts function. MacPorts has to have some sort of default behavior,  
and the default of including --disable-dependency-tracking reflected  
the best guess on what would work with most software.

I wasn't sure if there was a specific passage of the How Configuration  
Should Work section of the GNU Coding Standards document you wanted us  
to read. I'm not an expert at Makefiles and documents like that are  
pretty dense. If there was a specific passage you felt was relevant to  
the --disable-dependency-tracking option, please point it out.