Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> writes: > On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Jim Nasby <jim.na...@bluetreble.com> wrote: >> Currently, config/missing isn't being installed. This can lead to confusing >> error messages, such as if Perl isn't found and something needs it [1]. >> Attached patch adds it to install and uninstall recipes.
> I find it somewhat hard to believe this is the right thing to do. But > if this isn't right, then I don't know what is right, either. Installing our "missing" script seems like a seriously bad idea. For one thing, as the comments in it note, it's similar but not identical to such a script that exists in many GNU packages; we could easily create problems for other packages that rely on other variants of it. I wonder how much we need that script at all though. If, say, configure doesn't find bison, what's so wrong with just defining BISON=bison and letting the usual shell "bison: command not found" error leak through? I'm not seeing that we get a very large increment of user-friendliness from interposing the "missing" script. In at least one way it's a net negative: if you go and install bison after getting the error, you will have to re-run configure to recover, whereas playing dumb would frequently have left us with the right configuration output already. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers