[sane-devel] Proposal to remove autoconf-generated files from the source repository

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi ras,

r. a. schmied writes:

> i've embedded some more text way down towards the bottom
> regarding the AS_CASE(x$host_os,...) call and my solution
> history as related to/with solaris 10 sparc and its libusb.

> Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
>> [...]
>> By all means share your "hack".

Thanks for sharing!

> first off the AS_CASE(x$host_os,...) in configure.ac is
> intentionally disabled because of the leading 'x' char;
> as x$host_os is never going to match any $host_os variable.
> at least that was what i found when i created a case for solaris*.

My bad!  Thanks for pointing out this stupidity.  The 'x' is prefixed
just in case $host_os is empty.  Of course, that should be taken into
account in the globs.  :brown_bag: :face_palm:

> what this 'disabling' does do is always forces the *) choice
> which employs pkg-config to get the data for libusb.

ACK and that was completely unintentional.  Fixed in f901462f.

> so without the pkg-config pc file for libusb configure failed
> UNLESS i pre-set USB_CFLAGS and USB_LIBS on configure environment.
> then, because configure then found usb.h it went ahead and
> set #define HAVE_LIBUSB 1
>
> i saw/see no way to force configure to define HAVE_LIBUSB_LEGACY
> instead, short of re-working configure.ac as i have done.

You mentioned the existence of a libusb-config utility.  It was at an
odd-ball location in /usr/sfw/bin/ but if that directory is in your
PATH, then you should use that to get the various variables, without
setting any LIBUSB_* variables in your environment or on the
command-line when running configure.

All you should do is make sure /usr/sfw/bin/ is in your PATH or perhaps
tinker with AC_PATH_PROG to find it.

# See https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.69/autoconf.html#Generic-Programs

What does running libusb-config produce?  IIRC, there are flags to limit
output to LIBS and CFLAGS needed during the build.  These are the ones
you need to collect in the configure.ac code.  You also want to get the
libusb version from libusb-config if possible to determine which of
HAVE_LIBUSB and HAVE_LIBUSB_LEGACY to set to '1'.

# From your patch I gather your libusb is 0.1.7.  That is so old it's
# not funny anymore, BTW.  Hmm, I just noticed that our legacy check
# prefers >= 0.1.8 ... :thinking_face: ... over a 10+ year old libusb
# version that you appear to be using.  The code comment about 10+ is
# itself will be three years old next month, so 13+ years old libusb.

> [...] you saners are going to make a relatively large delta to
> configure and friends i figured i try to solve this solaris usblib
> problem 'the autotools way'.

:+1:

The autotools are a bit of a steep learning curve :unamused:

> [...]
> other things about autotools i've learned about the hard way:
> for example the current configure setup uses envvars
> USB_CFLAGS and USB_LIBS, but the ax_path_generic.m4 and
> ax_compare_version.m4 use/create envvars LIBUSB_CFLAGS and
> LIBUSB_LIBS.  that might be because i'm still a nooby with
> autotools, but it still is a wrinkle that really should be
> ironed out.  i'm sure there are others ....

I'm fairly sure this is caused by differences between libusb-1.0 and
libusb-0.1.  The former uses 'libusb' and 'LIBUSB', the latter uses
versions without the 'lib'/'LIB' bits.

FWIW, the sane-backends prefer libusb-1.0.

> [...]

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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