Re: [pcre-dev] Kudos on PCRE 7.2...

On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 09:23:11PM -0700, Robert Roessler wrote:
> Philip Hazel wrote:
> "Run ./configure!" is not an answer, as it is not part of the toolchain
> I and the majority of the world's programmers spend most of their time
> with, and therefore can NOT be part of a true multi-platform solution.
> "Pragmatic agnosticism" is what I perceive Philip's position to be... as
> distinct from parochialism. :|

I am sure that the point was to not exclude users like yourself. I think
we should get off the topic of build systems as I've stated before. I'm
semi confident that we aren't going to undo the autotools/CMake build
system support. That's why I'm suggesting, with your help, we could come
up with another approach that is very simple.

> Dr Hazel chose to make PCRE *freely* available to all programmers and
> the many users of their creations... without going for the politics of
> the GPL (and I don't know if this was a *non*-political statement, or
> just easier). Any attempt to forcibly bind PCRE more closely to this
> other software ecosystem and to thereby make it less accessible to those
> who have not "drunk the Kool-Aid" seems to go against the spirit of that
> contribution... which is why I keep hammering on this.

It's slightly annoying to me that you keep hammering on this, and
eventually will wear me out and I'll stop responding to you. I'm telling
you that it is an absolute fact that using the autotools system improves
the quality of the build system, provides new features to the build system
as they get added to the autotools kit, and, most of all, allows pcre to
build on hundreds if not thousands of configurations and environments
all for free. A stunt previously not easily doable by pcre or any hand
written build environment. Just reading some of the libtool manual will
convince you off this.

Now, with that said, I honestly understand where you are coming from and
am not putting you in a corner. My initial response was that I want to
help you, and your situation. In fact, Philip's initial response to
autotool'ing the build system was a hard stand against people in your
exact position. At the time, Daneil thought that CMake would provide
this support. So we were not expecting users in your situation (windows
with no bash shell) to build pcre using autotools build system.

With that said, I think we should switch the discussion of ideology, and
figure out exactly what problems you face, and if the CMake system is
good enough for you. If it is not, we should come up with another
solution.

BTW, please stay on the mailing list.

Thanks,
Bob Rossi