Re: status update

[<Joe...@t-...>]

Hi,

Daniel Jour replied to Sam Steingold:
>> Also, you removed the configure script, so now people have to install 
>> autoconf to build clisp.
>> Are you sure this is right?
>I removed it from the repository because it is a generated file now. It
>would be part of a source distribution (a release) though, thus only
>CLISP developers need to have autoconf/automake/etc.

1. It's good that you plan to keep configure as part of a release
   distribution. People expect to write ./configure ... && make.

I believe some people could be upset if they had to use autotools.  I remember
lots of reports (rumours? problems long solved?) in misc. projects about
version mismatch issues coming from autotools, when the developer and the user
have different versions of autotools.  Having the same configure for everybody
nicely solves this issue.

2. Probably that is precisely the reason why some open source project nevertheless
  *include* configure within their RCS/SVN/hg/git tree, beside configure.in.  The
  former file is then typically generated by one or a team of maintainers with a
  known (working) configuration, not by individual users.  Often enough,
  the file is only updated at release time in hg/git.  For instance, the wine
  project works exactly like this.

Somehow, it would be a pain for a user to have to get clisp source from hg but a
working configure from inside a downloaded distribution, instead of having everything
in the tree.

Regards,
	Jörg höhle