On Fri, 2004-02-20 at 19:59, Jim Jagielski wrote: > Greg Stein wrote: > > > > > I hate to chime in here, but I must agree. Things have certainly > > > come a long way when the build/configure system tried to > > > be as LCD (lowest common denominator) as possible. > > > > And it was a recursive make solution which we're trying to fix. If you can > > come up with an LCD approach which has a single top-level Makefile, then > > please feel free. > > > > > If we require all this "extra" stuff, then, at least to my > > > mind, it means that we need to rethink not just patch. > > > > Oh, come on. For somebody building straight from CVS, to add a Python > > dependence? Okay, so it caught a few people unawares. We make changes like > > that all the time. But this one is not hard to solve. > > > > In any case, this whole notion of "rewrite as a shell script" just isn't > > going to fly. > > :) > > No, I have no solutions, nor did I mean to imply that: > > o Such a solution is trivial > o That the solution used was done with no > thought of impact to developers.
Thanks Jim, for being explicit with that. I think this thread needed some of that explicitness, since it is beginning to show agitation across the board with the participants. I think there is a lot of potential to get religous in this thread, and that is indeed not where we want to go. Now, if we were using Subversion I would suggest that Greg create a branch, code the lot up, and then merge the final build system back. Heck, I'll even suggest that while using CVS. When a similar build system was introduced for Subversion, it broke builds for at least some developers. It took a bit of effort to get the problems out, but it was worth it. If we are going in this direction, and I prefer we do, (if only for the sake to see where this goes) I'd like to see it happen on a branch, so that the migration can be smooth instead of clunky accompagnied with lots of chagrin. Sander
