Subject: Re: either or DEPENDS?
To: None <root@garbled.net>
From: Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 12/23/1998 03:15:18
On Tue, 22 Dec 1998 23:22:10 MST, Tim Rightnour <root@garbled.net> wrote:
> On 23-Dec-98 mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu spoke unto us all:
> #  is there a clean way to handle this in a package?  I could hack a gnu
> #  'configure' script to search for f77 and then f2c-f77 and then fail if
> #  neither is there, but it would be nice if the package would just tell the
> #  user 'hey, you need one of these things'.
> #  
> #  Any suggestions?
> 
> I had discussed doing this before, but I don't think anything ever happened of
> it.  One of my ideas would be something like:
> 
> .if !exists(/usr/bin/f77)
> DEPENDS+= f2c
> .endif

That is what I did for the math/R package, which needs a Fortran
compiler to work; I just added it to the package Makefile.  The matter
of the package actually building successfully on a machine without
/usr/bin/f77 is up in the air, though, since I don't have the
resources to test it on a non-egcs system.

--
   Johnny C. Lam
   Department of Statistics             lamj@stat.cmu.edu
   Carnegie Mellon University           http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~lamj/

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