Re: Amusing warning from x11/xf86-input-void

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:32:41 +0200
    From:        Quentin Garnier <cube%cubidou.net@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20080923143241.GD18119%taryn.cubidou.net@localhost>

First, in case I wasn't 100% clear last time, the subject "Amusing warning..."
was meant to imply that I know this is not a serious problem...

However, since I have serious replies...

  | It's just autoconf always adding a test for the presence of fortran.

That's fine, checking to see if fortran (or C++ or whatever) is used
to make sure the right tools are available seems like a reasonable thing
to do (for sure the developer should know, but mistakes happen, and
helping locate them more quickly is a good thing).

  | pkgsrc adds scripts for all known languages so that we can catch a
  | mistake in what a package uses.

Fine.

What I was really wondering though (and no, this is not important enough for
me to go and attempt to work it out - if someone knows, or can guess, fine,
otherwise it can just remain a mystery, it isn't worth anyone's time) is
just what about those xf86-input-* (etc) packages can fool the test into
believing that fortran is (or might be) being used.

I find it pretty hard to believe that anything even resembling fortran
is being used by an Xorg input or video driver.

I am fairly sure that the warning does not appear for all packages, not
even all libtool packages - if it did (either of those) then that would be
a bug worth fixing, the warning (any warning) is useful only if its false
positive rate is reasonably low - if it appears all the time, then it will
just be ignored all the time, then it has no benefit, and would be better
removed (less time producing the thing.)

So, if I can assume that it only appears sometimes, then something about those
xorg packages must be fooling the test into believing fortran is used.

I wonder what?

  | That's why the message says "please consider" and not "you must".

Yes, I understand that...

kre