[vbox-dev] Patch to make configure work better on FreeBSD

[Jason Spiro]

Hi,

The FreeBSD binary packages system includes almost all the vbox build
requirements, but vbox's configure script doesn't work on the OS.  I
have written a patch to make the vbox 1.4.0 configure script work
better on FreeBSD.  It is attached.

Changes:

* I add a little TODO comment saying we should use the -pthread option
* I use sdl-config (a tool that comes with SDL) to find out SDL paths
* I add FreeBSD's Qt package location to QTDIR
* I mark FreeBSD as a valid OS type
* I display a tip encouraging the use of the --build-xalan option
* I don't check for ALSA on FreeBSD because FreeBSD apps can't use ALSA
* Many fixes to allow the use of /bin/sh instead of /bin/bash

I did not try to make the Xlibs lib and include path detection work or
to build the Qt test app with the -pthread option.  This is because I
don't know if any configure test results I captured would properly
affect the kBuild process.  So, the configure script still fails on
FreeBSD, but it manages to get further before failing.

I have tested my patch on FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE.  It works fine.  I am
fairly confident it will work fine on all other platforms too.  I
release my contributions to the public domain.  No warranty.

Could you kindly review my patch?  Or, if you are busy, could you at
least open up a ticket with the patch attached?  Either way please let
me know what you decide.

Regards,
Jason

P.S.  Thanks for making an open source edition of this wonderful
product available.

P.P.S.  If you used autoconf to generate your configure script, the
script would automatically work on Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, FreeBSD,
OpenBSD, NetBSD, and dozens of other OSes.  Do you happen to know:
Why don't you use autoconf?
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