Mentioned by ryanofsky in #16691:
Also, I think it would be a good idea that if a depends/${host}/share/config.site file exists, bitcoin configure script would just use depends/$(host) as the default –prefix value instead of /usr/local.
This way using depends would just require running ‘make -C depends; ./configure; make` without needing to figure out the host triple or look at depends output.
If this feature will be implemented what could be the way to force build against system packages?
Maybe an --enable-depends/--disable-depends configure option where no would disable use of depends config.site settings, yes would require them, and auto would use them if they exist for the current build/host pair
@fanquake @hebasto mentions here that:
I no longer consider this feature as a useful one due to the case, which is actually an everyday workflow for me, when the user has depends built for many hosts simultaneously.
Intuitively I would estimate the number of users building depends for multiple hosts to be significantly less than the number building for their own host (especially since we have #26834).
IMO ideally the easiest option should be geared towards new users who should only have to run make -C depends; ./configure; make to get a working version of Bitcoin Core with all the dependencies, rather than requiring them to modify the build options on the command line or export variables etc.
@hebasto might it not make sense to detect your host triplet and build with depends automatically only if that host triplet is found? In any other case you are cross-compiling and will be setting CONFIG_SITE anyway. ISTM that this would still work with @ryanofsky’s suggestion of an auto default mode for a --en/disable-depends flag