Re: newby question: to use or not to use ?

[Benoit SIGOURE]

On Jul 7, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Baurzhan Ismagulov wrote:
> I like the following features the most:
>
> * Cross-compilation support
> * Building in another directory
> * Targets like clean, distclean, etc.
> * Ease of adding new binaries and libraries (both internal and  
> external)
> * Testing framework integration

I'd add at least:
 * Ease of configuration (different platforms come with libraries in  
different places, it's much easier to invoke configure --with- 
libfoo=path than having to change some file to specify that path...  
especially once you automate your builds in a buildfarm)
 * Targets like distcheck, install DESTDIR=... or install prefix=...  
(sandboxing made easy)
 * libtool!!  It's one of the most complete and convenient component  
of the autotools, it solves a hell lot of problems when you build on  
lots of platforms.

> For us, these features do save costs in the long run; the  
> configuration
> files are much more maintainable than custom shell scripts and
> makefiles.
>
> As I said above, the main difficulty is to understand how all this  
> works
> and to figure out how to do a certain thing -- this may be very
> time-consuming.

For the beginners I recommend these slides:
http://www-src.lip6.fr/homepages/Alexandre.Duret-Lutz/dl/autotools.pdf

--
Benoit Sigoure aka Tsuna
EPITA Research and Development Laboratory

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