On Mon, 20 Sep 2004, Mike Hearn wrote: [...]
At some point somebody needs to compile a list of all the optional dependencies we use so packaging systems that support the concept of recommended/suggested packages can get this right.
Would it help if we modify the configure script to display a list of the optional dependencies that were not detected. I have attached a very rough prototype that displays a message if NAS, Alsa or ICU is not found:
$ ./configure ... many many lines later ... config.status: executing windows commands
Notes: *** NAS not detected. The winenas.drv.so driver will be a dummy. *** ICU not detected. Building without bidi support.
Configure finished. Do 'make depend && make' to compile Wine.
I only did this for 3 of the optional dependencies. This would obviously have to be generalized to the others (and the messages can probably be improved too). But this could help users and packagers detect what's missing to have a full-featured Wine build. It would certainly be simpler than having to scan the configure output: not everyone would realize that a missing xpg4 library won't impact Wine's capabilities (or at least I believe it won't), while a missing ubidi.h header means no bidirectional text support.