[Chicken-hackers] Make wars

[Ivan Shmakov]

        First of all, I know that the Autotools approach has been
        criticized for quite a long time.  Surely, I can understand the
        people having a hard feeling with all the bunches of
        autogenerated code.  However, considering the initial goals of
        the Autotools, namely, the ability to build the software on a
        number of divergent systems, and the ability to rely on only a
        few software packages generally available at that time, I have
        to admit that these ``bloating'' practices were necessary.

        I believe that would the portability be the primary goal for BSD
        Make, and would only the GNU system be considered as the target
        for the GNU Autotools, there'd rather be ``BSD Autotools'' and
        ``GNU Make Library'', with all the problems that were raised
        there.  Namely, the huge amount of generated code for Autotools,
        and that one rarely sees a system-specific Make library used on
        any other system.

        As to why I've chosen to implement `srcdir' rather than
        `OBJDIR', the software one's using alters the way one's
        thinking.  I won't probably be totally wrong if I'd say that
        I've build about 100 different packages with Autotools-based
        build systems.  I know pretty well how these build systems are
        used, how they're implemented, what are their gotchas, etc.
        Hence, `srcdir' support appears to me both intuitive, simple to
        use, and simple to implement (with GNU Make.)

        On the other hand, I've never used BSD Make, and most of my
        knowledge about it is due to reading related materials that
        Google brings to me and due to reading the posts like the ones
        emerged recently in the list.

        Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

        As to considering a transition to BSD Make, I'm not the one to
        make such decision for this project.  Thus, I'm providing the
        code for the build system currently in use.  Would the one be
        too difficult for me to deal with, I'd cease writing patches for
        it.  Perhaps, I'd consider making an Autotools-based one in a
        private branch as well.