RFR: 8344318: Enhance configure help for enabling/disabling single JVM features

[Erik Joelsson]

On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:09:59 GMT, Kim Barrett <kbarrett at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> make/autoconf/help.m4 line 243:
>> 
>>> 241:     # Print available JVM features
>>> 242:     $PRINTF "The following JVM features are valid as arguments to --with-jvm-features.\n"
>>> 243:     $PRINTF "The flag --enable-jvm-feature-<name>=no can be used to disable a single JVM feature.\n"
>> 
>> The canonical way to disable a feature in an autoconf script is `--disable-<foo>`, which is equivalent to `--enable-<foo>=no`. I also note that running `bash configure --help` already lists all the `--enable-jvm-feature-<foo>` options, so I'm unsure of the need for this additional documentation.
>
> Even a relatively experienced developer might not know that much about configure.  I think just having the
> help text says something about using `--disable-<foo>` would be helpful.

A general note about `--disable-<foo>` and `--without-<foo>`, usually negating the effect of `--enable-<foo>` and `--with-<foo>` respectively, could be reasonable to include, but that would need to go somewhere else as it's not specific to jvm features.

-------------

PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/22231#discussion_r1849033152