On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Lenny Foner wrote:
> Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2000 14:14:03 -0800
> From: Michael Sierchio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker wrote:
>
> > Oh well, I've been thinking of doing a Makefile haul-over for some
> > time, perhaps that time is now (or at least in the near future)...
>
> automake? autoconf? Pleez?
>
> Somethine like 2 years ago, probably more, I offered a set of diffs
> from SSLeay 0.8.1 which make it use automake and autoconf. I was
This is my personal opinion, so I'd wait till a couple of the other
developers reply before trying to draw any kind of impression about the
attitude "from the project" about the idea(s).
I'm totally +1 on the idea of having an autoconf-based configuration
system in OpenSSL. Between managing system headers, IPv4 variations,
compiler quirks, linker syntax, and other such nauseating headaches;
BSD4.x, POSIX, ISO, ANSI, standards themselves have "interesting"
conflicts not to mention what happens when you throw in proprietary system
variations; Solaris, HPUX, Irix, SCO, and anything using EBCDIC of course.
In short, the configuration in OpenSSL is now very complicated but
more importantly, very *manual*.
If it's possible to move to autoconf and not lose any platform support (or
flexibility) then it would be a hard one for anybody to argue against. Not
only would it push some platform support burden onto autoconf itself
(which is ideally where it belongs) but I suspect it would also allow us
to clean up a lot of source code kludge which should in turn lower the bar
on portability and code maintenance - if you've witnessed some of the
precompiler silliness in the source code you'll understand. However, I
think such an effort would require quite some coordination to demonstrate
its feasibility first; it would need to be demonstrated to satisfy all
OpenSSL's needs (so that we don't need two configuration mechanisms) and
it would need to be demonstrated to work across the currently supported
platforms (except for Win32/VMS or anything else that already has a
dedicated build system). IMHO, if it could do all that - and be
parameterised sufficiently to allow optional tweaking as the current
config does - then it should be a no-brainer to decide upon.
automake - I'm less convinced but, as with autoconf, it's a topic that's
likely to be played out between others (in terms of actually *doing it*)
so I will defer to them to comment further. This is not my turf, and I
don't have the time to figure out how to play in it. [;-) Would you care
to share your positive and negative experiences with autoconf? It would be
useful if those who have used it (either as a roaring success or a dismal
failure) could provide some input. Switching over to autoconf wholesale is
not something anyone would want us to do lightly or inadvisably.
Cheers,
Geoff
______________________________________________________________________
OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org
Development Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
