getting configuration parameters into package.conf

[Ross Paterson]

On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 01:28:23PM +0100, Sven Panne wrote:
> Ross Paterson wrote:
> >The current method for passing extra link options and the like (-D
> >flags in the Makefile, as used in the readline, OpenGL, GLUT, OpenAL
> >and X11 packages -- search for "yeuch") seems a bit clunky and brittle.
> >(And simulating these for Hugs is even worse.)
> 
> You're definitely right. Not one of the things to be proud of in our
> build system...
> 
> >Could these things be placed in config.h instead?
> 
> When we want to make the packages more self-contained and independent of
> the whole fptools build system (=> library infrastructure), a global
> common config.h is bad. Every package should have its own configuration
> headers, both probably generated by autoconf (= autoheader + configure):
> 
>    * One which is only needed during build time
>    * Another one which needed for using the package later
> 
> These two aspects are often lumped together. I tried to structure my
> (rather incomplete) OpenAL package in a way things probably should
> look like. Comments welcome...

My next question was going to be whether we could devolve more
package-specific configuration from the top-level configure to
the libraries or package level.  (They could be shared by Hugs,
for one thing.)  In your case, would it be reasonable to put AL_LIBS
in include/HsOpenALConfig.h and have package.conf.in include that?