Re: mtd-utils: Swtich to autotools based build system

[Martin Pluskal <mpluskal@suse.cz>]

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On Thu, 2016-07-28 at 23:04 +0200, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Am 25.07.2016 um 17:02 schrieb David Oberhollenzer:
> > 
> > This patch series is based on Richards RFC to replace the hand
> > written Makefiles with an autoconf/automake based build system
> > to gain all the advantages of having an _actual_ build system
> > that is high level, widely used, well known and mature/stable.
> > 
> > Switching to the GNU buildsystem should make it a lot easier for
> > people to [cross] compile the mtd-utils and integrating them into
> > existing, automated [cross] build toolchains, as the autotools are
> > very widely used/known, effectively representing a pseudo-standard
> > that people are familiar with and that a lot of tools have been
> > adapted to.
> > 
> > The GNU build system also had a few more decades time and a _lot_
> > more testing to mature in regards to cross compilation setups and
> > toolchains than the previous mtd-utils build system that would have
> > to be further supported and maintained in its entirety.
> > 
> > The proposed autotools based build system should also be easier to
> > maintain than a hurdle of makefiles. The automake files are more
> > high level and only contain a list of input files for each program.
> > Generating the makefiles with precise dependencies and build steps
> > is done by the build system.
> > 
> > Furthermore, files like the test scripts can fairly easily be
> > processed with autoconf at compile time to (for instance) replace
> > file locations with the actual path where a program is configured
> > to be installed.
> 
> Let's ask also package maintainers for their opinion.
> They have to (cross)build and package mtd-utils. :-)
> 
> You can find the whole series on:
> https://github.com/sigma-star/mtd-utils.git autoconf_25072016
> 
> Thanks,
> //richard
> 
Hello

definitely autotools - issue with custom makefiles is that they often
ignore conventions, when trying to enforce distribution specific things
one has to go through them, in case of mtd-utils for openSUSE [1], to
use distribution specific flags and have verbose build following has to
be done:
make CC="cc %{optflags}" V=1

Cheers

Martin

1. https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/openSUSE:Factory/mtd-ut
ils/mtd-utils.spec?expand=1
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