Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> On 7/30/17 12:50, Tom Lane wrote:
>> The reason it does that seems to be that we use AC_CHECK_PROGS
>> rather than AC_PATH_PROGS for locating "prove". I can see no
>> particular consistency to the decisions made in configure.in
>> about which to use:
> We use the "PATH" variants when we need a fully qualified name. For
> example, at some point or another, we needed to substitute a fully
> qualified perl binary name into the headers of scripts.
> If there is no such requirement, then we should use the non-PATH variants.
Why? That risks failures of various sorts, and you have not stated
any actual benefit of it.
In cases where people do things like sticking non-default Perl builds
into nonstandard places, failing to record the absolute path to the
program configure saw is both a documentation fail and a clear hazard
to build reproducibility. I think that "you can change your PATH and
get a different Perl version without reconfiguring" is an anti-feature,
because it poses a very high risk of not actually working.
regards, tom lane