Re: [CRAZY PROPOSAL] Automake should support only GNU make

[Stefano Lattarini]

On Wednesday 12 January 2011, Xochitl Lunde wrote:
> > 
> > > But let me rephrase the critique in a poignant way: if you want to
> > > require GNU make anyway, what is your rational to not use quagmire
> > > instead of Automake?
> > >
> > You mean this?
> >  <http://code.google.com/p/quagmire/>
> > 
> > Well, the fact that it took me ~ 3 minutes to find it with Google is a
> > good answer ... ;-)
> > 
> > All kidding aside, is yours a serious question?  If yes, I have a serious
> > answer (well, several ones in fact), but I'd rather not take the time to
> > write it down properly unless that's really useful.
> > 
> 
> Your answer to why not to use quagmire is too long to make it a useful
> answer?
>
> I went to this quagmire page you posted, and there is nothing in the 
> downloads tab.  That would be a enough reason for me not to use quagmire. 
> I see that I can get the source, but I don't want to have to compile this 
> thing if it's not purely script based.  Also when I go to 
> quagmire-discuss, there are a bunch of nasty topics that are over 1 month 
> old; nobody's moderating.
> 
Sorry, there's a misunderstanding here (caused by me I'd say).

Those you list above are very good *practical* reasons not to use quagmire
(and the very fact that it took me 3 minutes to find that page with google
was IMHO already a clear indicator that the project is dead in practice).

The "answer" I was speaking about would have been concerned with why I think
that the quagmire *design* and *roadmap* are broken (even ignoring its "less
than excellent" developement status).

Okay, at this point I can as well write that answer out summarily:

 - I want something that is backward-compatible with automake 1.11 as
   much as possible (I mean 98/99% compatible), and that works from
   "day 0".  Otherwise it won't stand any real chance of being used
   by real-worls projects.

 - I don't want to rewrite autoconf; with all its flaws, it rocks
   and is incredibly mature ans well-written.

 - I don't want to rewrite libtool in GNU make.  The very idea of
   trying to do so scares the hell out of me.

 - I think that keeping configuration and build steps separated is
   a very good idea.

Hope I managed to make myself clearer now.

Regards,
  Stefano