14 Sep
2017
14 Sep
'17
7:21 p.m.
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
|Rico Pajarola <rp(a)servium.ch> wrote:
|
|> I also wept a bit when reading this. I once built gnome from source (don't
|> ask why), on Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX. That was also the month I learned
|> how to use "autoconf" and "libtool" as swearwords...
|
|Libtool for sure. Autoconf is something you have to come to a negotiated
|truce with and then it's OK. :-)
I cannot seem to reach that state. I see that the m4 directory of
gawk v4.1.4 contains no less than 46 files with a total of 312 KB.
On top of that the root directory contains some configure related
files which sum up to about 500 KB.
I do not know how much manual work was necessary for the files in
m4, as i never have used autotools (except for a week or so doing
something -- now obsolete -- for groff, there m4/groff.m4 is about
50 KB and handcraft). And when i look into the missing_d of gawk
i cannot help to wonder what all that is for.
But of course, what is the alternative? My MUA has a handcrafted
75 KB config shell script but the make system no longer could
install: on e.g. UnixWare v7.1.4 because of problems of the system
make last time i tried (we could outsource that as a shell script
and simply invoke that though), it does not work on the Solaris 9
i have access to (via OpenCSW.org) because we cannot work around
a SIZE_MAX iirc that is only defined but to nothing etc. etc. etc.
|> 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.
Plan9 shows an impressive beauty regarding this topic, but it, of
course, is exclusive to a current Plan9.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)