[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] configure: much faster configure --help

[Diego Biurrun]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 03:39:01AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 05:47:25PM +0100, Alexander Strasser wrote:
> > Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 05:40:53PM +0100, Erik Auerswald wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > MPlayer's configure does a lot of work before checking command line
> > > > options. This includes updating of an ffmpeg git repository before
> > > > producing help output, even when only asked for help.
> > > > 
> > > > The attached patch rearranges configure's help output code to be in
> > > > front of ffmpeg repo checks and updates and introduces a new check,
> > > > if the first command line option is --help or -h and prints the help
> > > > immediately.
> > > > 
> > > > This drastically speeds up checking for available configure options,
> > > > if done the common way of "./configure --help". If the --help resp.
> > > > -h option is somewhere else on configure's command line, the (kept)
> > > > existing check will find this after doing all the initial setup
> > > > work, taking much longer overall.
> > > 
> > > I'm not really convinced of the usefulness of this in the first place,
> > > but even then I consider it overkill.  Just check for --help/-h early.
> > 
> >   I do not understand your reasoning.
> > 
> >   The latest version Erik and I worked out:
> > 
> >   1. Detects the help option in every position
> >   2. Is consistent with current configure behaviour
> >   3. Does not duplicate the check for the help option
> 
> Maybe, maybe not.  The only version I saw moved around a large swath
> of code and might have unforeseen side-effects.

Note that I have cooked up a solution of my own, some of the preliminaries
are still buggy though.

Diego