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

[James Rowe]

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.

Jay

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