linux-kernel - Re: [ANNOUNCE] util-linux-ng 2.13-rc1

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Message-ID: <468E0852.1020908@garzik.org>
Date:	Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:16:02 -0400
From:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
To:	Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@...hat.com>
CC:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>, Karel Zak <kzak@...hat.com>,
	List util-linux-ng <util-linux-ng@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] util-linux-ng 2.13-rc1

Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>> And this is really dumb.  autotools is a completely pain in the ass and
>>> not useful at all for linux-only tools.
>> A myth.  It is quite useful for packagers, because of the high Just
>> Works(tm) factor.  After porting an entire across several revisions of a
>> distro, the autotools-based packages are the ones that work out of the
>> box 90% of the time.
> 
> And the 10% where it doesn't work it is a real pain to figure what goes
> wrong due to the completely unreadable Makefiles generated by autotools.
>  After all they are not Makefiles, they are shellscripts embedded into
> Makefiles.
> 
>> The other 90% of _my_ time comes from annoying people who roll their own
>> Makefile/build solution, which the packager has to then learn.
> 
> Well, it's not *that* hard to write makefiles which follow the usual
> gnuish conventions, so stuff like "make DESTDIR=/tmp/buildroot install"
> works just fine.  That isn't a reason to use autotools.  Especially as
> people get that wrong *even with* autotools from time to time ...

It's not _just_ makefiles, though.  Packaging systems know what to do 
with configure scripts, and automatically plug that into their systems, 
e.g. with rpm's %configure, %make_install, etc.

Having ported an entire distro, the time savings with autotools [OR 
ANOTHER STANDARD BUILD/CONFIGURE SYSTEM] are very real.  Similarly, the 
time sink with each project doing its own home-rolled build/configure 
system is also very real.

	Jeff



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