Re: [Notion-devel] Have we ever discussed using autoconf?

[Jeff B. <jef...@gm...>]

On 01/19/2014 02:40 PM, Dima Kogan wrote:
> je...@jo... writes:
>
>> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 04:00:28PM -0500, Jeff Backus wrote:
>>> Hi folks,
>>>
>>> Have we considered using autoconf to generate some of the .mk files,
>>> such as modulelist.mk and system-autodetect.mk? With the requirement
>>> that the user be able to override various things like version of lua
>>> used or locations of various libraries, it seems to me like being able
>>> to do "./configure --uselua51" or whatever might be more user-friendly
>>> than editing files.
>> I don't remember.  I would however strongly suggest something other than
>> autotools.  Personally, I much prefer CMake [1].  While it is far from
>> perfect, it is way saner than autotools.
> Hi.
>
> What problem are we trying to solve here? I.e. why move to autotools or
> cmake? The current build system problems aren't due to our use of plain
> make. My STRONG preference is vanilla make. Before we go off rebuilding
> this, can we write down an explicit list of things we want the build to
> do that it isn't currently doing? Then we can evaluate if moving build
> systems is worth the trouble.

Hi Dima,

I was hoping to make the process less manual / reduce the number of 
edits I need to make on my end to build the Fedora package. (yes, I'm 
lazy. O:-) ). I was proposing autoconf because I assumed that any 
environment that had make and pkg-config would have autoconf, since it 
has become (as far as I can tell) standard. It has been a long time 
since I've used anything outside of the more "feature-complete" distros, 
so I have no idea how real my impressions are. The advantage that I see 
to using autoconf to build system-autodetect.mk is that it provides a  
"standard" automation interface while preserving the ability to allow 
Notion's components or 3rd party programs to continue to build as they 
do now and not require the user to remember settings later. I see it as 
a "hey, wouldn't it be nice if" kind of things.

I don't know anything about CMake outside of occasionally building 
programs that require it.

Regards,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Backus
jef...@gm...
http://sites.google.com/site/jeffbackus/