118345 - ./configure --help text "--enable-optimize[=OPT]" is irritating

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Tillmann Steinbrecher]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.7) Gecko/20011221
BuildID:    any (e.g. 0.9.6, 0.9.7)

In the mozilla source dir, running "./configure --help" displays the following:

--enable-optimize[=OPT] Enable compiler optimizations (default=-O)

Now, the typical user will read the "[=OPT]" and will run configure like this:

./configure --enable-optimize=2 (for example).

This is wrong. configure will work but make will fail later on. The option must
be used without the =2 or =1:

./configure --enable-optimize

so the [=OPT] in the help text doesn't make sense.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. run ./configure --help
2.
3.

Actual Results:  Irritating help text --enable-optimize[=OPT] is displayed

Expected Results:  Better help text "--enable-optimize" without the [=OPT]
should be displayed

This is trivial, but I spent hours trying to find out why Mozilla wouldn't
compile, because I used --enable-optimize=2. By searching on google, I found the
solution, in a reply to somebody who had the same problem.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Well.... you can use:

--enable-optimize="-O3 -march i686"

for example... so maybe we should just be clearer about what "OPT" is?  These 
are options to pass directly to the compiler...

Comment 2

[Tillmann Steinbrecher]

Ah... I didn't know that (although I read the UNIX build instructions and the
"Building A Mozilla Distribution" instructions). Yes that's a good idea to be a
little clearer about what OPT is - it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere (or
maybe I just looked in the wrong place?).

Comment 3

[James Cox]

accepting QA for mozilla developer docs.

some of these bugs have been around for a _long_ time. Reporters, would you
please review the bugs, see if the issues have been resolved, and close bugs
appropriately.

I will do a full review of all bugs not touched in one week (8th April). 

Thanks.

</spam>

Comment 4

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

The help text is actually part of the source.

Comment 5

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Hrm.  Looking at this again, the option is clear if the user has any experience
using configure or reads the configure --help output.

soundwave:moz/main/mozilla] cls% ./configure --help
Usage: configure [options] [host]
Options: [defaults in brackets after descriptions]

--enable-optimize[=OPT] Enable compiler optimizations (default=-O)

I'm not sure how to make that more clear without (IMO) being unnecessarily
verbose.  I will change the defaults to use brackets as the autoconf generated
options use.

--enable-optimize[=OPT] Enable optimizations using compiler options [OPT=-O]

or maybe just

--enable-optimize[=OPT] Enable optimizations using compiler options [-O]

Comment 6

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Attachment: v1.0

Comment 7

[hacker formerly known as [e-mail]]

Patch has been checked in.