Make Configure non-interactive by default

[Leont]

metaconfig has always produced an interactive Configure, but I think time has shown that this is no longer the right default. No other configure generator does this, and even our own docs tell users not to do that.

It may have made sense 30 years ago, when Unices were unpredictable, but nowadays Configure generally works out of the box, and if users want to set an option they will do that at the command line. All of this begs the question:

Why don't we make non-interactive the default?

If everyone is using -des, we should be making that the default and make interactive mode the option.

[jkeenan]

On 3/23/21 7:26 PM, Leon Timmermans wrote: |metaconfig| has always produced an interactive |Configure|, but I think time has shown that this is no longer the right default. No other configure generator does this, and even our own docs tell users not to do that. It may have made sense 30 years ago, when Unices were unpredictable, but nowadays Configure generally works out of the box, and if users want to set an option they will do that at the command line. All of this begs the question: Why don't we make non-interactive the default? If everyone is using |-des|, we should be making that the default and make interactive mode the option.

I type '-des' dozens of times each week. +1 to this so as to reduce my chance of getting carpal tunnel! jimk

[Tux]

I'm not opposed. I seldom type Configure, as I have a wrapper called Conf that has very short options

$ Conf -64a -n -t -qm
Cleaning up ...
rm -f Policy.sh
rm -f UU/cmdline.opt
rm -f UU/optdef.sh
rmdir /pro/3gl/CPAN/perl-current/UU
Configure -Dusedevel  -Duse64bitall -Dusethreads -Duseithreads -Dusequadmath -des
First let's make sure your kit is complete.  Checking...
:

(-n being no debugging, as the default for Conf is -DDEBUGGING)

I'd like to hear Andy's opinion