On 15 June 2011 07:55, Matt Welland <estifo...@gmail.com> wrote: > All of these alternative build systems are a PITA on one system or another. > If it requires jam, cmake or anything that requires installing prerequisites > 9 times out of 10 I won't even try that software unless there is a binary > install available somewhere or a pre-assembled Makefile. > > I thought that from an end user perspective all that is needed with autoconf > is sh. The requirement is on the developer to run autoconf before making the > tar. I thought autoconf itself is not needed on the platform where the build > is being done, correct??
So long as you get all the tests right, yes. However, in my experience most autotoolized projects require some patches to random parts, and most often the auto* parts requiring the auto* suite on the user's system. For a long time building on OS X required regenerating the auto* parts of pretty much everything because only fresh autotools supported it, and scripts generated by older tools failed (and everybody used some random old autotools). That's for an experience from slightly exotic platform. The alternatives usually require the configuration tool to be present to generate *any* makefile skipping the intermediate shell script step. This seems like a drawback but consider that - in many cases when you have to build the tools in question you would have to build autotools to regenerate the shell script anyway - the tools are available for most platforms anyway - cross-building is an option for overly uncooperative exotic platforms - not relying on the intermediate shell script makes maintenance and dependency tracking easier I would like to see, eg. platforms supported by autotools out of the box that don't have CMake or Python. Thanks Michal _______________________________________________ fossil-users mailing list fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org http://lists.fossil-scm.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fossil-users
