I think that many of the things you say are interesting, but they are part of a much broader discussion.
In a conversation I had with particle and chromatic at YAPC, particle indicated that we would be revisiting the design of our configuration at a point before 1.0. So what I'm doing now is largely focused on responding to particular needs expressed by our developers which do not require a complete re-thinking of our configuration system right now. So, for example, here I'm trying to respond to a particular issue raised by Coke that I think can be remedied relatively simply. But let me ask this: On Sat Aug 09 09:37:49 2008, doughera wrote: > On Sat, 9 Aug 2008, James Keenan via RT wrote: > > For example, how can you know > which > compiler flags to suggest if you don't even know which compiler you're > using yet? Do you believe that the search for the C compiler (and, presumably, related things like the linker) should be moved earlier in the configuration process? You've hinted at that before and, though I don't pretend to understand all the issues, it seems plausible that we should get this information earlier than we do. If so, what sequence of steps would you recommend?
