14 Sep
2017
14 Sep
'17
2:13 p.m.
On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 1:11 PM, <arnold(a)skeeve.com> wrote:
;)
Rico Pajarola <rp(a)servium.ch> wrote:
True, I'm amazed every time I try a really old version of some old GNU
software like bash 1.0 on a contemporary (but unusual) OS. No errors, no
warnings, nothing to fix-up manually. It just works.
My two cents (as one of those battle-scarred developers :-)
But on modern Linux? That's not my
experience. Maybe we just have
different
standards for "just works", but a
typical "modern" open source project
nowadays "just works" (for my definition of just works) on pretty much
any
modern system including FreeBSD (type:
./configure; make && make
install).
Like anything else, it depends on the quality, knowledge, and experience
of the developers. The problem isn't really the Autotools as much as
inexperienced developers who don't understand that all the world is not
Linux and who thus feel free to assume way too many things.
We just went through the exercise of building the latest libpcap for
Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. Nightmarish, due to dependency upon
flex, which in turn took an act of Congress in order to get it to build,
particularly on AIX, but also not so easy on the others.
OTOH, the older GNU projects, with experienced developers (gawk, Bash)
don't exhibit such issues.