Andreas Metzler wrote:
> However using auto* might be easier to maintain and ight lower the
> entry barrier for new developers
> cu andreas
> [1] Compiling exim multiple times with different options requires ugly
> hacks.
Having just converted another project to automake/autoconf/libtool, I
can understand the points being made in this thread on both sides.
However, I can also say that as an end-user, I _really_ like the
consistency of using autoconf-managed packages. Every time I unpack a
tarball and see a GNU configure script, I know that --prefix=/foo is
going to work, that there will be --enable/--disable options, and I can
specify paths to my unusually installed libraries using --with-foo=/...
It lightens my load, because I don't have to remember different ways of
accomplishing these common tasks.
Do I hate the fact that configure scripts (and the libtool script) as so
large? Absolutely. That is being addressed, as the autoconf developers
are moving to use shell-script functions now that they have determined
it's fairly safe to do that. That will not be seen in an official
release for some time, though.
IMHO the execution speed of configure/libtool scripts is becoming less
of an issue as well; especially since the target audience for Exim tends
to be building on reasonably recent and speedy hardware, and the 10 or
15 seconds that would be lost is not really going to make a large
difference.
