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Re: Future plans for Autotools
From: |
Bob Friesenhahn |
Subject: |
Re: Future plans for Autotools |
Date: |
Thu, 6 May 2021 18:33:50 -0500 (CDT) |
User-agent: |
Alpine 2.20 (GSO 67 2015-01-07) |
On Thu, 6 May 2021, Andy Tai wrote:
a general question: would a rewrite in Python or some other language,
to keep the same functionality as the current implementation, a viable
goal, or that would not be a productive thing to do?
There are several major aspects of Automake. One is the use of Perl
scripts to transform a user-provided high-level description into a
portable Makefile. Another is the design and syntax of the Makefile
itself. There are also m4 Autoconf macros to integrate Automake into
Autoconf scripts.
Supporting a feature such as two targets from the same source file
apparently is aided by depending on GNU Make features so the result
would no longer be a portable Makefile. It has yet to be decided to
require use of GNU Make.
Perl is not necessarily more difficult to read and understand than
Python but some popular Perl syntax may be very difficult for new
users to understand whereas Python mostly avoids such syntax.
Regardless, the current major problem is now how difficult the
Automake software is to maintain. The major problem is that there is
no one fully dedicated to maintain it. All work appears to be done on
an intermittent part-time basis.
Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Public Key, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/public-key.txt
Re: Future plans for Autotools, Kip Warner, 2021/05/03
Re: Future plans for Autotools, Karl Berry, 2021/05/12