[webkit-dev] Autoconf

[Mike Emmel]

On 2/20/06, Krzysztof Kowalczyk <kkowalczyk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/20/06, Mike Emmel <mike.emmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm working on upgrading the linux port now. For this I feel I really
> > should use autoconf.
> > Are there any strong feelings  on adding autoconf support for building.
>
> My personal experiences with build software with autoconf, even on
> mainstream Linux distros (Debian, Red Hat, Ubuntu) is negative which
> means that I failed to build it more often than I succeded. Sometimes
> autoconf version that I had was too old, sometimes too new, sometimes
> depended m4 macros were not installed but most of the time I would
> just get incomprehensible, impossible to debug error message.
>
> Autoconf is better than nothing but I would personally prefer a
> hand-written Makefile.
>
> Common belief is that only autoconf/automake etc. is able to support
> building under wide variety of Unixes but projects like e.g. ffmpeg
> show that it's possible to write a makefile and a custom configure.sh
> script that works.
>
Yes I agree that it could work using makefiles but I don't think thats
and option
for me right now since for now I'm the only one that seems to be working on this
and then only in my spare time. I don't think that spending a lot of
time developing a
make only build system is the best way to get the linux port in the
mainstream to entice other developers to participate. I'd rather get
it working under autoconf then maybe considering how butt ugly
autoconf is Apple will allow the  command line xcode tools to be
ported to linux :)
Or more likely replace it with a simple make based build system later.

Mike


> -- kjk
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