On 7/31/17 15:17, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > On 7/31/17 14:55, Tom Lane wrote: >>> We use the "PATH" variants when we need a fully qualified name. For >>> example, at some point or another, we needed to substitute a fully >>> qualified perl binary name into the headers of scripts. >> >>> If there is no such requirement, then we should use the non-PATH variants. >> >> Why? That risks failures of various sorts, and you have not stated >> any actual benefit of it. > > What I wrote is merely a description of the current practice. That > practice was in turn developed out of ancient Autoconf standard > practices. There are arguments to be made for doing it differently. > > One major PITA with the AC_PATH_* checks is that you can only override > them with environment variables that are full paths; otherwise the > environment variables are ignored. For example, currently, running > > ./configure PYTHON=python3 > > will result in the PYTHON setting being ignored. Currently, this only > affects a small number of variables, but if we expanded that, it would > be a pretty significant usability change.
Plus certain special macros such as AC_PROG_CC don't have a PATH variant, so you're always going to have some inconsistencies. -- Peter Eisentraut http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
