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I've spent a fair amount of time over the past decades to make autotools work on my projects, and I've never felt like it was a good use of time. It's likely t

I've spent a fair amount of time over the past decades to make autotools work on my projects, and I've never felt like it was a good use of time. It's likely that C will continue to be used by everyone for decades to come, but I know that I'll personally never start a new project in C again. I'm still glad that there's some sort of push to make autotools suck less for legacy projects.

tidwall 2y ago
I've stopped using autotools for new projects. Just a Makefile, and the -j flag for concurrency.
monkeyelite 2y ago
You can use make without configure. If needed, you can also write your own configure instead of using auto tools. Creating a make file is about 10 lines and is the lowest friction for me to get programming of any environment. Familiarity is part of that.
- edoceo 2y ago
  Write your own configure? For an internal project, where much is under domain control, sure. But for the 1000s of projects trying to multi-plarform and/or support flavours/versions - oh gosh.
  - monkeyelite 2y ago
    It depends on how much platform specific stuff you are trying to use. Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors. Autotools is going to check every config from the past 50 years.
    - charcircuit 2y ago
      >Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors. No? Most operating systems don't have a separate packager. They have the developer package the application.
      - monkeyelite 2y ago
        Yes? Each operating system is very different and almost every package has patches or separate install scripts.
- viraptor 2y ago
  It's a bit of a balance once you get bigger dependencies. A generic autoconf is annoying to write, but rarely an issue when packaging for a distro. Most issues I've had to fix in nixpkgs were for custom builds unfortunately. But if you don't plan to distribute things widely (or have no deps).. Whatever, just do what works for you.
psyclobe 2y ago
cmake ftw
- aldanor 2y ago
  You mean cargo build
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    ... can cargo build things that aren't rust? If yes, that's really cool. If no, then it's not really in the same problem domain.
    - kouteiheika 2y ago
      No it can't. It can build a Rust program (build.rs) which builds things that aren't Rust, but that's an entirely different use case (building non-Rust library to use inside of Rust programs).
    - crabbone 2y ago
      There's GprBuild (Ada tool) that can build C (not sure about C++). It also has more elaborate configuration structure, but I didn't use it extensively to tell what exactly and how exactly does it do it. In combination with Alire it can also manage dependencies Cargo-style.
      - touisteur 2y ago
        Got it to build C++, CUDA and IIRC SYCL too.
- malkia 2y ago
  cmake uses configure, or configure-like too!
  - ahartmetz 2y ago
    Same concept, but completely different implementation.
eqvinox 2y ago
To extend on sibling comments: autoconf is in no way, shape or form an "official" build system associated with C. It is a GNU creation and certainly popular, but not to a "monopoly" degree, and it's share is declining. (plain make & meson & cmake being popular alternatives)

tidwall 2y ago

I've stopped using autotools for new projects. Just a Makefile, and the -j flag for concurrency.

monkeyelite 2y ago

You can use make without configure. If needed, you can also write your own configure instead of using auto tools. Creating a make file is about 10 lines and is the lowest friction for me to get programming of any environment. Familiarity is part of that.

edoceo 2y ago
Write your own configure? For an internal project, where much is under domain control, sure. But for the 1000s of projects trying to multi-plarform and/or support flavours/versions - oh gosh.
- monkeyelite 2y ago
  It depends on how much platform specific stuff you are trying to use. Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors. Autotools is going to check every config from the past 50 years.
  - charcircuit 2y ago
    >Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors. No? Most operating systems don't have a separate packager. They have the developer package the application.
    - monkeyelite 2y ago
      Yes? Each operating system is very different and almost every package has patches or separate install scripts.
viraptor 2y ago
It's a bit of a balance once you get bigger dependencies. A generic autoconf is annoying to write, but rarely an issue when packaging for a distro. Most issues I've had to fix in nixpkgs were for custom builds unfortunately. But if you don't plan to distribute things widely (or have no deps).. Whatever, just do what works for you.

psyclobe 2y ago

cmake ftw

aldanor 2y ago
You mean cargo build
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  ... can cargo build things that aren't rust? If yes, that's really cool. If no, then it's not really in the same problem domain.
  - kouteiheika 2y ago
    No it can't. It can build a Rust program (build.rs) which builds things that aren't Rust, but that's an entirely different use case (building non-Rust library to use inside of Rust programs).
  - crabbone 2y ago
    There's GprBuild (Ada tool) that can build C (not sure about C++). It also has more elaborate configuration structure, but I didn't use it extensively to tell what exactly and how exactly does it do it. In combination with Alire it can also manage dependencies Cargo-style.
    - touisteur 2y ago
      Got it to build C++, CUDA and IIRC SYCL too.
malkia 2y ago
cmake uses configure, or configure-like too!
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  Same concept, but completely different implementation.

eqvinox 2y ago

To extend on sibling comments: autoconf is in no way, shape or form an "official" build system associated with C. It is a GNU creation and certainly popular, but not to a "monopoly" degree, and it's share is declining. (plain make & meson & cmake being popular alternatives)