Re: [PATCH] Compilation failing without Lua (--without-liblua)

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 03:42:51AM -0500, Patrick Donnelly wrote:
> Off-topic: Wouldn't --without-nse be a better name for
> --without-liblua? We don't have --without-python to exclude Zenmap
> after all :)

Good question.  We offer three liblua library configuration
directives.  From ./configure --help:

  --with-liblua=DIR       Use an existing (compiled) lua lib from DIR/include
                          and DIR/lib.
  --with-liblua=included  Use the liblua version included with Nmap
  --without-liblua        Compile without lua (this will exclude all of NSE
                          from compilation)

This is similar to how we treat other libraries like libpcre, openssl,
libpcap, etc. (though some of them are required and thus don't have
the --without version).  So while I agree that --without-nse makes
more sense by itself, the current option name provides consistency
with the --with-liblua options and with the option flags for the other
libraries.

Also, who knows, maybe Nmap will use Lua for more than NSE at some point.

On the other hand, as you note, we do also have options like
--without-zenmap, --without-ncat, etc.

Overall I think the option name is OK as is.  After all, I hope it is
uncommon that people would specifically want to remove NSE.  It is one
of Nmap's best features :).

Cheers,
-F
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