On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> ;-) I've read about tons of failure-to-build-from-source bugs of
> packages using autoconf/make on the list of release-critical bugs for
> Debian, while exim just works. - Of course this depends on the
> cluefulness of Phil, but auto* seems to be quite easy to do wrong,
> also.
Autoconf works quite tolerably for small packages like PCRE and my music
typesetting software (both of which use autoconf - but not automake).
However, I do not find it easy to drive.
Exim, on the other hand, is a big package with lots of things that
admins are able to tweak. The interface to "./configure" is _very_
limited; nobody is going to type
./configure --many --different --settings
every time they build Exim. If they had to, they'd keep the command in a
file (actually, I do that for packages I build with ./configure, so that
next time I know what I did). If you have it in a file, you might as
well use a file from the start, and make it a more readable format.
At least, that's the way I see it.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
