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Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:06:09 +0100
From: Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de>
To: dev@httpd.apache.org
Subject: Re: PATCH: call aclocal for PCRE in buildconf
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* Justin Erenkrantz <justin@erenkrantz.com> wrote:

<snip>
> automake corrupts the build process by forcing us to give up control without
> solving any fundamental problems and introduce a lot of needless complexity
> and bugs into the build system.  I wouldn't let any project that I hate use
> it.  It's awful.  Greg and I and others have posted to dev@httpd in the past
> as to the problems introduced by automake.

ACK.

But autoconf isn't much better. 
Generating unreadably scripts which try to detect somethings somehow 
and produce unpredictable output is not a good way.

I have to build many binary packages for several targets (crosscompiling) 
and there're just a few days when the autoconf'ed configure stuff works
withouut trouble. Carefully hand-written Makefiles and configure-scripts
work much better.

I've proposed a completely different way - modeling the abstract structure
of software in a hierachical structure - in many projects, but no one
listened ...

<snip>
> It'd add no value and would probably make our lives hell.  GNU autoconf and
> libtool add some value, but every once in a while, I'd like to toss those out,
> too.  (In a way, I already did so for GNU libtool...see APR's
> --enable-experimental-libtool.)

Thats a good start, but (for me) doesnt go far enough. 
I've written down some first concepts for a platform-independent and 
crosscompile-capabable universal toolchain (frontend). 

http://nibiru.borg.metux.de:7000/wiki/index.php/Universal_Toolchain

<snip>
> If we import a new PCRE tree and we need to tweak their build system, 
> then we can do that.  But, introducing a dependency on automake isn't 
> an acceptable solution.  -- justin
If you repair pcre's (or some other package's) buildsystem - and freeing 
it from automake IS repairing it - I would be happy to see it this go 
back to the offical package. And if the maintainers refuse it, then 
just do a forkoff. In that case I'd offer to maintain and promote the 
forked branch.


cu
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