Re: [Libmesh-devel] Still Really Dislike Automake

[Roy S. <roy...@ic...>]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Derek Gaston wrote:

> After all of these years: I still dislike the Automake build system
> in libMesh.

So do I.

> I still can't believe that we threw out a perfectly
> decent build system and saddled ourselves with this thing.

> In hindsight: do you guys TRULY think it was worth it?

For install/dist/distcheck targets, and out-of-source builds?  Yeah.

> All I'm trying to do right now is add ONE damn header file - and I
> can't seem to find the magic script / sauce to get everything
> updated.  I ran include/rebuild_include_HEADERS.sh ... nope.  I ran
> bootstrap... still nope.  Oh!  Now I remember... I need to run
> include/libmesh/rebuild_makefile.sh... NOPE!

Should we put one magic add_files.sh at the top level?

But the two include shell scripts should have done it... that's always
worked for me.  I guess I usually manually bootstrap afterwards too,
but in my experience automake is smart enough to rerun itself if it
sees Makefile.am newer than Makefile.in.

> Ok - 100% serious here.  If I redo the libMesh build system so that
> it's autoconf and make based again - would you guys consider
> switching to it? 

Consider?  Yes.  Anticipate agreeing to with such a high probability
that the work would be worth your time?  No.

Except... if you're going full Focus on creating a new build system,
presumably you'd want to put it in MOOSE too...

And I'd really love to be able to do out-of-source builds in MOOSE
too.  If "autoderek" handled that (plus "make install"; I don't care
as much about dist/distcheck) it would be totally worth the switch
from my point of view.  You'd still have to convince others though.

(It's not really graft if I let my decisions get swayed for code
rather than money, right? ...)
---
Roy