From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] util-linux-ng 2.13-rc1 Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:16:02 -0400 Message-ID: <468E0852.1020908@garzik.org> References: <20070703221156.GY14825@petra.dvoda.cz> <20070704084211.GA19128@infradead.org> <468D78BE.4030902@garzik.org> <468E04D3.6080002@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Christoph Hellwig , Karel Zak , List util-linux-ng , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org To: Gerd Hoffmann Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:54661 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756279AbXGFJQI (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Jul 2007 05:16:08 -0400 In-Reply-To: <468E04D3.6080002@redhat.com> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Gerd Hoffmann wrote: > Jeff Garzik wrote: >> Christoph Hellwig wrote: >>> And this is really dumb. autotools is a completely pain in the ass and >>> not useful at all for linux-only tools. >> A myth. It is quite useful for packagers, because of the high Just >> Works(tm) factor. After porting an entire across several revisions of a >> distro, the autotools-based packages are the ones that work out of the >> box 90% of the time. > > And the 10% where it doesn't work it is a real pain to figure what goes > wrong due to the completely unreadable Makefiles generated by autotools. > After all they are not Makefiles, they are shellscripts embedded into > Makefiles. > >> The other 90% of _my_ time comes from annoying people who roll their own >> Makefile/build solution, which the packager has to then learn. > > Well, it's not *that* hard to write makefiles which follow the usual > gnuish conventions, so stuff like "make DESTDIR=/tmp/buildroot install" > works just fine. That isn't a reason to use autotools. Especially as > people get that wrong *even with* autotools from time to time ... It's not _just_ makefiles, though. Packaging systems know what to do with configure scripts, and automatically plug that into their systems, e.g. with rpm's %configure, %make_install, etc. Having ported an entire distro, the time savings with autotools [OR ANOTHER STANDARD BUILD/CONFIGURE SYSTEM] are very real. Similarly, the time sink with each project doing its own home-rolled build/configure system is also very real. Jeff