Re: [Groff] Migration to automake;

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> . It automatically generates all the necessary targets in the
>>   Makefile.
>
> Depends on your definition of "necessary".

The targets mandated by the GNU coding standard.

>> . It ensures correct dependency handling.
>
> What does this mean?  GCC tracked dependencies?  They are trivial to
> manage, without all the bloat and obfuscation of automake.

Bad wording, sorry.  I rather mean make dependencies of the various
targets.  A very convenient feature, for example, is the automatic
regeneration of `configure', or the Makefile(s) in case you are
changing something in `Makefile.am' or `configure.ac' and you simply
call `make'.

>> . Integration of gnulib is very, very simple with automake.
>
> Let's not go there.  Personally, I consider gnulib to be grossly --
> and hideously -- over-engineered, and bloated by needless
> dependencies.

I think rather the opposite, considering it as a quite elegant means
to circumvent portability issues.

>> . It ensures that only the documented files become part of the
>>   tarball.
>
> Provided you've documented them accordingly, within Makefile.am; this
> can also be achieved within Makefile.in, while avoiding the bloated
> overhead of automake.

Mhmm.  With automake, I simply create a list of source code files, and
the appropriate rules for `make dist', or `make install' are
automatically generated.  It is *not* trivial to ensure that all those
targets are synchronized.  And `Makefile.am' files can be *really*
small.

>> . In `gnits' mode, it takes care of a lot of distribution stuff
>>   that is very is easy to forget.
>
> For example?

Checking the presence of the files `INSTALL', NEWS', etc.  More
details are in the `automake' documentation.


   Werner