Re: [ANNOUNCE] util-linux-ng 2.13-rc1

[Joel Becker <Joel.Becker@oracle.com>]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 11:01:07AM +0200, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> 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.

	Do not mistake the use of autoconf with automake.  automake
generates the unreadable Makefiles.  You can quite easily create a
useful Makefile yourself and use autoconf to select installation
locations, detect features of older/newer libcs, etc.  See
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/makebo/ for an example of a build system
that doesn't use automake, but allows for autoconf to do build-time
configuration (an example user of makebo is ocfs2-tools, see
 http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2-tools/src/trunk/).
	And if you think that all packages should Just Work on all
Linuxen, with out any build-time detection, try determining the
differing udev layouts of FC6, FC7, Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE9, SuSE10, etc.
Or where manpages go.  The %configure of RPM specfiles and the
dh_installman of debian packages handle this for you...often because
they can use expected behavior of your build system.  What about
futexes?  Older systems don't have them.  Gotta detect that.

Joel

-- 

"I'm drifting and drifting
 Just like a ship out on the sea.
 Cause I ain't got nobody, baby,
 In this world to care for me."

Joel Becker
Principal Software Developer
Oracle
E-mail: joel.becker@oracle.com
Phone: (650) 506-8127