Ondřej Surý wrote: > On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 17:59, Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) > > <vanmeeu...@kolabsys.com> wrote: > > 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. > > With my fancy debian maintainer hat on - I agree, we learnt how to cope > with different versions of autotools, that's the minor thing. > > I personally I would love to have cyrus projects automakized. It's much > easy to mangle :). >
Between the two of us, Debian and Fedora maintainers, are we both saying "yes please, no objections"? 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
