Re: A Closer Look at GNU AutoTools

[Nick Bowler]

On 2014-09-04 17:00 -0400, Shawn H Corey wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Sep 2014 16:33:13 -0400
> Nick Bowler <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Can you be more constructive?  I think Autoconf and Automake have
> > rather good manuals[1][2].  Why are they crappy?  How can we make
> > them better?
> > 
> > [1] https://gnu.org/s/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html
> > [2] https://gnu.org/s/automake/manual/automake.html
> 
> When was the last time you read completely through those manuals?
> There's too much information all at once.

I have never read the manuals cover-to-cover.  But by now I have probably
read most, if not all of the material in them over the course of ~10 years.

But this puts me in a bad position to critique the manual from the
perspective of newbies: as I know Autoconf rather well I am unlikely to
notice if some details are missing from the manual.

> And I didn't say the manuals were bad. It's that the documentation is
> too dense and not organized for learning. In other words, crappy.

Sorry, I am having a hard time reconciling these two statements.

> It took me two days to find the diagram on my blog from Wikipedia. It
> should have been one of the first things I searched for.

Similar diagrams are found at the very beginning of chapter 3 ("Making
configure scripts") of the Autoconf manual.  Would changing them or
perhaps adding another diagram here improve the manual?

Thanks,
-- 
Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)