I noticed that configure.in is set up to pull a fixed set of symbols
out of the template files, by means of this rather grotty code:

AROPT=`grep '^AROPT:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
SHARED_LIB=`grep '^SHARED_LIB:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
CFLAGS=`grep '^CFLAGS:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
SRCH_INC=`grep '^SRCH_INC:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
SRCH_LIB=`grep '^SRCH_LIB:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
USE_LOCALE=`grep '^USE_LOCALE:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
DLSUFFIX=`grep '^DLSUFFIX:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
DL_LIB=`grep '^DL_LIB:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
YACC=`grep '^YACC:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
YFLAGS=`grep '^YFLAGS:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
CC=`grep '^CC:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
LIBS=`grep '^LIBS:' template/$TEMPLATE | awk -F: '{print $2}'`

It seems to me that configure ought to just read the selected template
file as a series of shell variable assignments and process whatever it
finds.  That way, a template file could assign to any shell variable
within the configure run, not just these twelve.

There is already one case where a template file tries to assign a
setting that configure isn't noticing: template/sco contains
	LEX:lex
which is quite nonfunctional at the moment.  Presumably, whoever
put that in did so with the expectation that configure would honor it.

Any objection to this change?

I also notice that most of the template files contain settings for
"ALL", which isn't being used by configure either.  (It won't be even
after my proposed change of the template-file-reading code, because ALL
isn't referenced anywhere in the configure script.)  Most of the
templates just set ALL to empty, but template/svr4 contains
	ALL:+W0
Anyone have the foggiest what this item is supposed to do?  It's
definitely dead code as things stand, but perhaps at one time it meant
something.

			regards, tom lane

Sun, 22 Nov 1998 13:47:57 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Generalizing configure's template-file support