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What if autoconf could be replaced by moving the configuration steps into makefiles, rather than vice-versa?
File paths and library lists can already be handled nicely with systems like pkg-config, with the only requirement that the pkg-config tool be in the path.
Why not move feature-detection and other configure sort of tasks into makefiles too?
A library of makefile pieces could be built that represent various autoconf tests, stored in a central directory like /usr/share/pkgconfig, ready for inclusion into GNUmakefiles. Rules might look like this:
include $(shell pkg-config gnuconf-make --variable=MAKEFILE) all: check-configuration PKGCONFIG_PACKAGES=gtk2 atk lua-5.0.0 check-configuration: check-c-compiler check-cpp check-ld my-custom-check check-pkgconfig-packages my-custom-check: do something here to check some part of the build
April 13 2008, 02:31:14 UTC 4 years ago
April 13 2008, 03:30:41 UTC 4 years ago
But an incremental change, using existing infrastructure even better would be awesome.
And it would simplify the user side, unify the developer side, and be much more inspectable.
April 13 2008, 04:56:52 UTC 4 years ago
and i imagined all of this in your creepy old man voice too. :(
Anonymous
April 13 2008, 16:13:13 UTC 4 years ago
autotools are evil
While I hate autotools I think pure makefiles will make it even uglier. You might want to check waf as it's a rather nice autocrap replacement :)-- Patrys
April 13 2008, 16:37:33 UTC 4 years ago
Re: autotools are evil
The thing is, I don't want to replace it wholesale -- I want to use the existing infrastructure -- the checks are good, and the extensibility is excellent, it'd be nice to isolate the m4 macros into a system library and not have the complexity of auto* in various ordersI've been using gnustep-make, and it's exceptionally easy to use.