* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 06:41:20PM CET: > > Besides, in the particular case of automake, how often do automake > > or aclocal get invoked directly? To my experience, they are almost > > always invoked by autoreconf, ./bootstrap, or some custom autogen.sh > > script.
(aside: autoreconf works just in the same way as automake in this respect.) > > > > Let's address this on bug-standards before changing any programs. > > > Now a decision has been reached on bug-standards *not* to tighten the > specification about the behaviour of --help and --version: > <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-standards/2010-11/msg00010.html> Nor to forbid the current behavior of automake. > Considering that, do you agree to simplify the automake/aclocal option > parsing by not trying to process --help/--version options encountered > after invalid options? I'm painfully aware that this is a near-bikeshed discussion, but I simply fail to see the advantage of taking away existing functionality helpful for the user, even if only a few users. Code simplification is nice, but this change wouldn't suddenly make automake fast, all that much more readable, or anything similar. Barring that there is a technical advantage for our users[1], I remain unconvinced. Sorry, Ralf [1] A technical reason would be something like: erroring instead of warning due to an unknown argument is better because it enables users to write robust configure tests for arguments. This doesn't apply here, of course.