Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Call for opinion. Breaking out cmd-* from libarch

[James Blackwell]

("cry of help" in the language of "jblack", which you picked up on)
>     > From: address@hidden (James Blackwell)
>     > Can anybody explain to me why we're not using autoconf? Its got
>     > problems, but at least I can make that one do what I want. :)
>

Tom Lord wrote:
> Um..... you sent me an off-list message describing some of the bugs
> you aren't sure how to solve.
>
> Please accept this gently but: you may be able to get autoconf to "do
> what you want" but you are missing some fundamentals about how linking
> works.

After reading your email, I think you're right. Going with the general
tone of the rest of your email, yeah, I wasn't being fair to pf. Once
you bonked me for linking in the wrong order (something I think you have
to watch out for autoconf as well), things worked great.

I was in a *really* snitty mood after making about 200
changes in about 120 files. I wasn't snitty about making the change,
but by the idea that I'm probably screwing up the abstraction somewhere 
with cmd(s|utils)?.[ch], which would mean that eventually, I'd have to
make 120 hacks again. 

After going through that pain in the ass (which was comperable to the
summer I spent roofing), I want to give a serious round of applause to
Joel Rosdahl. He did something quite similiar a couple days ago with the
version string. 

> Don't pick an f'ed up tool like autoconf just to avoid learning
> something (which is fairly simple) like linking foo.
>
> Short executive summary: p-f isn't the replacement for ac *in general*
> yet --- but it shelters arch from ac induced bogosities.  By quite a
> lot.  It's easy to get from p-f to something even better, but going to
> ac would be a major regression.

Actually, now that I'm starting to get a handle on pf, I'm starting to
like it better. What threw me off was making the commands a library.
What I was looking for was a pile of object files I could link in.

btw, does p-f handle subdirs of subdirs? Originally I tried moving cmd-*
from libarch to tla/tla/commands, but couldn't even begin to figure out how
to handle it properly. Thats why I ended up with just tla/commands.
(Obviously, I'm not going to move it AGAIN, but for future note)

-- 
James Blackwell          Try something fun: For the next 24 hours, give
Smile more!              each person you meet a compliment!

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