On Nov 14, 2007, at 4:22 PM, ron minnich wrote:
On Nov 14, 2007 11:25 AM, erik quanstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
a good percentage of the stuff configured is not required. configure
spends a lot of energy looking for spiffy optimizations that can
safely
be skipped.
Configure also screws us up when it's needed. Especially when I'm
having problems compiling software because I'm missing a library I
don't want to take the time to install! DON'T DYNAMICALLY LINK. Good
thing Plan 9 don't (as far as I know).
It also introduces a complication. How automated is autotools when
you have this: see /n/sources/contrib/pietro/Autotools.png
It's how autotools works. The circles are programs you run to get a
configure file! It should be called a portability nightmare!
And how about this in the category of pointless:
Checking for C compiler...
Is that even necessary? Do you think someone compiling a program
written in C would have a C compiler on them? Oh, and when you find
out it's gcc, why does it go on to check whether or not it has
specific flags and header files - especially standard header files,
because I don't think you would need to ensure you have standard
header files anyway anymore because everyone who uses anything made
after 1990 (pretty much 99.024% of the population) use Standard C?
Why not just assume those flags and headers are there?
I once tried to contribute to AbiWord. But Compilation using
autotools held me back. And then I discovered troff, and that's what
I'm using from now on (although I might make a mm to AbiWord
converter one day). Oh how the mighty GNU have fallen.
