Re: [Boost-users] How to meet these cross-platform project goals?

From: zvrba_at_[hidden]
Date: 2006-04-03 09:46:41

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On Sun, Apr 02, 2006 at 03:54:30PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
>

You can tweak configure to do anything that you want, it doesn't depend
on automake or libtool.

As a *user* of open-source software trying to compile some things by himself,
I have a very *bad* experiences with automake-generated makefiles and libtool.
Esp. with libtool. When it breaks, it is next to impossible to fix the build
process "by hand". And I've seen break both libtool and configure. More than
once have I been in the position of a sysadmin cursing at both programmers
using autotools and persons who invented them.

As a *developer* of OSS, I steer clear of all of the GNU auto* stuff.  They
are pretty poorly documented, and autoconf's purpose is questionable today
(I gues that there isn't a decent unix where fork() doesn't exist, etc.  -
something that ./configure tests for by default).

The learning curve for auto* tools is too high, so I leave to the users
a well-documented makefile where they can tweak include and library paths,
while also providing binary packages for the most common systems. This I base
on the premise that if a user wants to build a package by him/herself (while
binaries are available), then (s)he is adept enough to find location of
dependencies.

auto* wouldn't be so bad if it wouldn't mess up the build process so
that it is very hard to get around ./configure, libtool, etc. and there
*are* times when one wants/needs to get around them.

just my 2 cents.

Best regards,
  Zeljko.
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