Thomas Jarosch wrote: > Hi Дилян, > > here's some feedback about your build system question. > Note: I'm not one of the cyrus core developers. > > > if I rewrite the build system of Cyrus imap 2.4(.10) to use Automake to > > generate the Makefile.in-files, will the patch be accepted in reasonable > > time in git/master? > > Have you considered alternatives to GNU Autotools? > > We have experience with GNU Autotools in our company projects as well as > open source projects for several years now. > > We have found that it has several shortcomings: > > 1. Autotools version conflicts > > You can compile a released source package without any Autotools on your > system. But as soon as you > > a) want to develop > b) want to install a patch which modifies the build system (like a new path > to a library, something that adds a new file,...). This is often happens > as part of packaging for .rpm or .deb. > > you need Autotools on your machine. If the Autotools version on your > machine and the one used to build the release are not compatible you can't > build. > > Installing a different Autotools version on a given distribution without > breaking something or fixing a huge list of dependency problems is nearly > impossible. I have experience with this... >
I have quite the experience with .rpm and .deb building myself as well, and while I agree autotools *can* be problematic at times, I recon the Linux distributions are not the biggest of problems - the culprit, I think, is with the number of custom / site-specific builds out there, ranging from Sun Solaris to FreeBSD and who knows what versions of autotools are on these systems. Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -- Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com t: +44 144 340 9500 m: +44 74 2516 3817 w: http://www.kolabsys.com pgp: 9342 BF08
