A chunk of the output of "./configure --help" is taken up by options
for SWIG:
--enable-perl-install-mode
Perl SWIG interface install mode site/vendor/custom
(default: site)
--enable-installsitearch
Perl installsitearch directory (default: Perl
default)
--enable-installsitelib Perl installsitelib directory (default: Perl
default)
--enable-installvendorarch
Perl installvendorarch directory (default: Perl
default)
--enable-installvendorlib
Perl installvendorlib directory (default: Perl
default)
These do not appear to be appropriate uses of --enable_* flags. From
the Autoconf manual for AC_ARG_ENABLE:
If a software package has optional compile-time features, the user can
give ‘configure’ command line options to specify whether to compile
them. The options have one of these forms:
--enable-FEATURE[=ARG]
--disable-FEATURE
These options allow users to choose which optional features to build
and install. ‘--enable-FEATURE’ options should never make a feature
behave differently or cause one feature to replace another. They should
only cause parts of the program to be built rather than left out.
This doesn't describe these options, which are there to allow the user to
provide strings to use as directory names.
These options were introduced in the following commit:
commit b2db2c2acf88fc21d844cebb3b58234b93399924
Author: Patrice Dumas <[email protected]>
Date: 2025-07-16 08:29:08 +0200
Integrate Perl SWIG interface in the build system
Are these options really useful?
In my opinion, these options make the output of ./configure --help
less useful because there are so many options there that the user
wouldn't have any interest in, that they would be less likely to
see any that they might be interested in, choosing rather to skip
reading through the entire thing.
Some of the --with-* options do take directory arguments:
--with-gnulib-prefix=DIR search for gnulib's runtime data in DIR/share
--with-libiconv-prefix[=DIR] search for libiconv in DIR/include and DIR/lib
- however, I see no reason for imitating these usages, as these do not
appear to match the intended use of AC_ARG_WITH either.
