-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 I know this topic has been discussed before, but AFAICT it didn't really get far. Neither side presented particularly compelling arguments (IMHO), and so the burden of proof in arguing for change was not met.
== Here are the reasons why I think moving to automake is the smart move: - Automatic tracking of GNU Coding Guidelines (which, in regard to Makefiles at least, tend to be pretty good ideas, but somewhat hard to implement/track without automake) - Automated packaging and package-testing - Automatic support for a wide variety of configuration and build scenarios, such as configuring or building from a location other than the source directory tree, or the DESTDIR late installation-location variable. - Included ability to modify the binary names (we can currently kludge this via $(exeext), but not to the degree that automake gives us this automatically). - Mauro, when he first brought it up some time ago, pointed to the fact that it has several grades of "clean", which can be useful for various needs. - "nothing but" distribution list (also mostly automated), instead of "everything but", which is superior IMO. This wouldn't be an argument for Automake by itself, since we could do this fairly easily ourselves... but little things add up. == Here are the arguments that I am currently aware of against using automake: - Complicated I actually don't find this to be true. The arguments to this effect seem to refer to the generated Makefiles.... but you don't _edit_ those. There is the argument that they are harder to debug, but personally I've never found this to be case; and I've had very little difficulty grokking the Makefiles themselves, actually. In terms of actually writing the Makefile.am documents, though, in general it is actually much _easier_ than writing the plain Makefile equivalents. - Support for non-recursive makes may not be great This is from my personal experience, though I later found some good solutions to the problems I had encountered. However, I believe this is likely to be far less well-supported than recursive builds. However, since Wget currently uses recursive builds, this really isn't an issue for us. - Another thing to know It's yet another tool for developers to have to learn. However, next to having to grok autoconf and Make and NLS, it's not difficult to learn, and IMO seems worth the nuisance, for the advantages that I've listed earlier. == I obviously wouldn't be looking to make the move for our upcoming 1.11 release in September; but I would desire to make the move soon thereafter. Since this was apparently something that some people felt strongly about, I thought it'd be wise to broach the subject now, so we have plenty of time to discuss it. So, please speak up! - -- Micah J. Cowan Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer... http://micah.cowan.name/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGoTZq7M8hyUobTrERCCm5AJ9Aj4JSEvXjx8QUTzjQAApI45sgCQCeOuQz iox1Q9qBfuSb7qWHuG6bjbM= =Wo6m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
