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Autoconf and Automake? Although they might seem obscure at first glance, the Autotools are stable and reliable for developing robust and efficient build system
by georgeorwell 14y ago
Autoconf and Automake? Although they might seem obscure at first glance, the Autotools are stable and reliable for developing robust and efficient build systems, and the mailing lists are always helpful.
- charliesome 14y agoYou're kidding right?
- endgame 14y agoAs someone who has contributed to automake, I do not believe they're not the correct tools for this job. You want autoconf either because you want automake, or because you need to do platform-specific checks to adapt your software. You want automake to get automated dependency tracking and to get a Makefile that supports the GNU coding standards. Neither of these apply here: you're basically chaining together small shell snippets to build a couple of files. Raw make is the correct tool, IMHO
- georgeorwell 14y agoI made the suggestion because the Autotools provide a standard way of doing things. If you can shoehorn your project into make distcheck, you're basically done. As you noted above, there were problems with the way he did things that I'm pretty sure would not be there in an Autotools build. Plus, it gives you something expandable instead of a base for more cruft. ./configure is always nice, and any make is about 'automated dependency tracking' so I'm a little unclear as to why that doesn't apply. I guess at this point it's not totally unfeasible to maintain the Makefile by hand.
- endgame 14y agoLet's be honest - the autotools bring a nontrivial amount of cruft to the table, and are regarded as "black magic" by most developers. The automated dependency tracking that I refer to is how automake-generated Makefiles track dependent headers &c. for some compiled languages. That's not at all relevant for the bootstrap project.