autoconf madness

[Dridi Boukelmoune]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 6:00 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> --------
> In message <CABoVN9DKswgGkEVQ+Jb-HUvx1PNyyPc0o5+nrzZ=R732Q9gBiQ at mail.gmail.com>
> , Dridi Boukelmoune writes:
>
> Yes, we are probably poor users of autocrap.
>
> But I don't want to make excuses for that.
>
> We're trying to build 8 small binaries, three static and four dynamic
> libraries.
>
> We should not have to even think about build infrastructure *at all*.
>
> *It* *should* *just* *work*.

I'm afraid compilers don't make it easy when it comes to just working
and portability. At least on the dependency management side pkg-config
does a great job (if *.pc files are properly written).

> And that is why I want to get rid of autocrap:  It doesn't just work,
> not even close.

There are things from autotools themselves and from the
autoconf-archive that certainly don't just work, or even work.

>>Also please note that Guillaume once submitted a patch for a
>>non-recursive automake build, which I think would also help contain
>>the complexity^Wmadness.
>
> Absolutely, and I'd love to have that going in.

So what's the goal? Are we still getting rid of autocrap?

> The only change I ask is that each of the lib/bin subdirectories
> have a trivial makefile along the lines of:
>
>         *:
>                 cd ../.. && make $(*)
>
> (no, make(1) doesn't grok that, but you get the idea...

Yes, although make's design was very spot on IMO it also lacks many
useful things today. As for myself, I haven't felt the need to cd into
a sub-directory for a long time, so I would no longer hurt from having
a single Makefile.

Dridi