H.Merijn Brand wrote:
> Ahh, so we can add Fink to the list of supported things for libtool?
> Very soothing thought. I'm still stuck with AIX though, and that is
> not by choice. I have no plans to work with Fink. Guess Fink isn't
> designed for OS's like HP-UX and AIX.
You're right, it's not. It's an implementation of the Debian packaging tools
and repository specifically for OS X.
>> to upgrade it from the libtool 1.5.1-made-5-years-ago that they packaged
>> their tarball with. As much as I hate the autotools, they're better
>> than the many roll-your-own monstrocities I've seen which *don't* use them.
>
> I still like the idea that some packages support, in rolling
> specific Makefile's for every supported OS, and having a more
> generic Makefile.generic to modify on your own when your OS
> is not (yet) supported. A `fixed' one can then be sent back
> and included in the next release.
Oh dear lordy lord no. As one who lives in Makefile generation hell and as
much hatred I hate for the whole idea, and how inflexible and suboptimal it
can sometimes be, it is still infinitely better than individual projects
trying to maintain multiple parallel copies of hand-rolled Makefiles for each
individual OS.
It's every conceivable violation of the DRY principle all rolled up into one
neat little hairball. Project A hasn't updated their Makefile for the latest
version of FooOS. Project B didn't bother to write one for FooOS. Project C
got FooOS right but left out BarOS. Project D wrote their Makefile assuming
GNU tools are available, but it doesn't work with BSD tools. Project E fixed
an issue in FooOS's Makefile, but forgot to put that fix in BarOS's Makefile.
Project F got everything right, but none of the other projects can take
advantage of that. And nobody works on Windows.
At least with a single tool to handle this sort of thing you can fix things on
one place rather than fixing the same problems over and over again, and in new
and interesting ways, in every piece of software out there.
The journal's reasoning not to use libtool, a 2% size increase, pales in
comparison to the horrors I've seen committed with hand-rolled build systems.
Cripes, just fix libtool.
--
I do have a cause though. It's obscenity. I'm for it.
- Tom Lehrer
