[TCLCORE] Re: [TCLCORE] Welcome!

[Mo D. <md...@cy...>]

On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Eric Melski wrote:

> Welcome to the tc...@aj... mailing list.  This list is for
> people who have CVS write access to the Tcl core repository.

Hey, now that I am on "the list", perhaps it would be a good time
to ask why there are no ./configure scripts in the Tcl/Tk CVS?   
At first, it seems like a good idea to leave them out (saves  
time because you don't need to deal with auto-generated files
in the CVS). That seems like a good idea, but what ends up
happening is that people try to grab the CVS version and
then they complain because they can not just run it, they
need to go install the autotools first. It gets even worse
when folks that do not know what they are doing try to
generate a ./configure. It seems easy, but someone will
find a way to screw it up and then they will complain some
more.

That whole mess could be avoided if the generated ./configure
files are put into the CVS.

While I am at it, why are there two different sets of build
scripts? One for Unix and one for Windows just means that
your need to do everything twice. If the build systems
were merged into a common build system, life would be
a heck of a lot easier. It would not be easy, it would
take a lot of work but it is doable for 8.4. After
8.3.2 is out of the door, we could start to address this
problem. I also think it would make things a lot easier
if we used all the autotools not just autoconf. Both
automake and libtool have some really nice features.
It would be a step backwards at first because Tcl already
works on some systems that libtool does not. In the
long run, I think it would be better to just let libtool
deal with all the ugliness if creating shared libraries
on lots of different systems.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc

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