[Mapserver-users] configure options and using --without

[Daniel Morissette]

Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> I am trying to explicitly disable support for several configure options 
> and am finding that some appear not to have a "without" option.  Is this 
> normal use of configure options?  I see that some options have with and 
> without in the ./configure --help listing, but assumed that without should 
> work on any option.  What do you think?
> 

In general, using --without should work even if not explicitly listed in 
the --help.

> 
> ./configure --without-mpatrol
> 
> checking whether we should compile in MPATROL support...
> configure: error: Could not find mpatrol.h or libmpatrol.a/libmpatrol.so 
> in /
> data4/src/gis/mapserver-4.0.1/no.
> 

There was a typo in a variable in the configure.in that caused that.  I 
have fixed it in the 4.1 CVS.


> ----------
> Here are a few of the other options I found I couldn't explicitly disable. 
>  I assume some of this may be due to requirements of GD and MapServer. 
>>From everything I've read, GD is the only requirement - but of course 
> jpeg, freetype, png (and zlib) could all be used by GD, so I can see that 
> mapserv won't do a heck of a lot if I disable these, but humour me :)
> Here's what I found happened when I attempted to disable each of these - 
> only PNG appears to not have got added in - any idea why?
> 

Seems that the configure script isn't bullet-proof and assumes that 
nobody will try to disable an option that's already built into their 
system. i.e. if your GD was built with jpeg, zlib, png and/or freetype, 
then having the ability to disable some or all of them in MapServer's 
Makefile would only result in linking problems. Since that doesn't 
impact usage in normal conditions I didn't really investigate any 
further, but you could always file this as a bug.

Daniel
-- 
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  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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