Re: Best practices for autotools

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Warren,

On 5 May 2010, at 00:15, Warren Young wrote:
> On 5/3/2010 10:11 PM, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
>> 
>> CAVEAT EMPTOR: While it is certainly worth skimming through the
>> autobook to get a feel for how the various programs interact and can
>> be used together, the book will be 10 years old this year, and much
>> has changed in that time that makes plenty of the details described
>> in the book inaccurate, obsolete or just plain wrong.
> 
> I don't know that I ever would have started using autotools without the 
> autobook.  Coming to it for the first time can be hugely confusing, and it 
> smoothed out a lot of bumps for me.  Any chance of a new version of the book 
> for the next generation of newbies?

Thanks for the positive feedback, it's always nice to hear back from
someone who has gained something from our book.

Sadly, right now there are not enough hours in the day for me to
rewrite the content of the autobook to bring it inline with the
current state of the tools. But, the book is open source, and I
would be more than happy to accept patches or even organise a commit
rights for anyone that would like to tackle some small (or large)
part of the work of bringing it up to date.

I have been approached by 3 separate reputable publishers about a
follow-up, but have had to let them all down for lack of time. But,
I'm certain that it would be easy to arrange for a fully updated
and revised autobook to be published through amazon and brick and
mortar stores by one of those publishers thanks to the licensing
of the original... if that serves as motivation to begin the work
of updating it.

And, of course there is also John Calcote's new Autotools book in
the pipeline:

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1593272065/?tag=gidca-20

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (address@hidden)