Re: AC_NO_EXECUTABLES is useless for GCC

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com>]

Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> writes:

> I think we'll be better served by declarative macros such as
> AC_{CC,CXX,...}_LINK_MAY_FAIL, that modify the autoconf-generated
> sanity link test for AC_PROG_{CC,CXX,...} such that it does not bail
> out if it fails, but rather it sets a variable indicating the result
> of the test, such that we could base our decision on whether to
> perform additional link tests on this variable.  Does it sound like
> this would work?

This approach sounds weird to me.  The basic problem is that
AC_PROG_CC does the wrong thing for libstdc++ and a few other
configure scripts--namely, it executes the test of whether the
compiler works.  It seems to me that AC_PROG_CC should call some
helper macros--perhaps just two--and that libstdc++ should call a
subset of those helper macros--perhaps just one.

Adding macros which change the behaviour of other macros seems
confusing.  I don't see the advantage of that at all.

Ian