Re: [Quilt-dev] auto~conf/make

[Martin Quinson]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 11:11:27PM +0000, James Rowe wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 11:12:32 +0100
> Martin Quinson <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > I used automake quite heavily on my projects, in Grid computing
> > context (ie, wide area distributed computing), on rather big projects,
> > with rather complex dependencies.
> > 
> > But I would say that automake is a bit overengineered for small
> > projects like quilt.
> > 
> > Like always, I prefer encounter the problem before spending time to
> > solve it.
> 
>   I agree, hence automake.  Around 15% of the boxes I have to use
> everyday will continually throw errors just on make install in its
> current condition, probably 1/3 of those could be solved with upgrades
> to the development tools and changes to the Makefile.  I really don't
> see the point, I only have to look back at the 'suppose so' attitude
> attached to the -h flag for the tarballs to see that any larger
> changes will probably lead the same way as this.
> 
>   The old version we used here over the Makefile involved 2 fixes I
> did, and 4 a colleague had to do just to get quilt built and installed
> on the variety of boxes we use.  A quick look at the current cvs says to
> me 3 of those are now redundant, 1 could be fixed with a change to
> autoconf(+ one line in the Makefile) and the other two I can't evaluate
> here because I only have access to the front-side boxes until I get back
> to the office. I really don't believe it is right to alienate users just
> because /you/ can't directly see problems, however I am not going to
> redo the sections for the static Makefile.in anyway because it has
> reached that point of no return for me.  If I was to move back for our
> sources then I would need to also redo the CVS, notary, tests,
> completion module and file permissions work on top for zero gain and no
> doubt more problems from users of what I am going to guess you would
> call non-standard systems.


Well, well, well.

I did not guess that my mail will deserve such flames. I'm sorry, as I said
earlier, I'm not native speaker, and some point of your mail are quite
obscure to me (explaining in part the delay of the answer). Please forgive
me if I'm out of topic here.

Do you mean that we should release right now, since you need some features
only present in the CVS? 

What is the relation between the need of tests and completion module and
automake. Please don't tell me that you plan to use autotest...
>From the info file:
     *Note: This section describes an experimental feature which will be
     part of Autoconf in a forthcoming release.  Although we believe
     Autotest is stabilizing, this documentation describes an interface
     which might change in the future: do not depend upon Autotest without
     subscribing to the Autoconf mailing lists.*
I don't think so, since, autotest is part of autoconf, not automake.

My point was that in my opinion, quilt was small enough to rely on autoconf
only, and not on the whole auto* familly. I may perfectly be wrong. I did
not test it on other platforms lastly. If it is the case, please don't flame
me. Show me what points of the current solution are problematic, and how
automake could solve them.

Anyway, since I didn't provide much work for quilt until now, I don't feel
that my opinion is definitive in any way. 
I give my point of view, but Andreas is the one you have to convince ;)


Thanks for your time, Mt.