Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
> On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 10:23, Fahad G. wrote:
>> I checked and I don't have 'readline' installed. --without-readline did the
>> trick, but shouldn't this be handled automatically?
> This is intentional
Indeed. A few releases back we did actually behave that way (drop the
readline functionality and continue) but it was persuasively argued that
this was a Bad Thing. To see why, you should consider the fact that
configure is often run in non-interactive contexts (such as RPM package
construction) where its output isn't likely to be scrutinized by humans.
RPM package makers would much rather get a build failure than have the
thing bull ahead and build a substandard RPM. Even when configure *is*
invoked interactively, the output isn't likely to be scrutinized
closely; and a newbie may not understand the implications of a bleat in
the output even if he reads it.
So basically, the opinion around here is that if you want a build with
nonfunctional readline capability, you need to say so on the configure
command line. The default assumption is that you want readline, and
we aim to do that or die trying.
regards, tom lane