[Libguestfs] Usage of 'no' as external helper

[Olaf Hering]

libguestfs and supermin use 'no' instead of either the basename of the
desired application, or 'false', as helper string. This happens when
configure does not find things like rpm or supermin during build.

Wouldnt it be more logical to use the basename instead of 'no' so that
at runtime one has the chance to install the required packages and in
addition get an obvious error message in verbose mode what external
helper is actually missing? In my package I force a few things like
'export ZYPPER=zypper' to avoid the unneeded BuildRequires: zypper. But
doing that for every binary that maybe called is cumbersome.

I think its best to rely on PATH to let libguestfs and supermin packages
find their external helpers at runtime. And one who has a need to
actually hardcode absolute paths to external helpers into his
libguestfs/supermin binaries can do that by doing the 'export
HELPER=/path/to/helper' during his own configure run.

Thoughts?


Olaf