Bo Peng wrote: > I have a feeling that we are talking about configure.m4 and > configure.py. It is definitely true that autotools are doing a decent > job now and is actually doing better than scons in some ways. However, > when we talk about maintainability and extensibility, autotools are > far behind. This is exactly the reason why we replaced configure.m4 by > configure.py.
No, there is a big difference: configure.m4 was a home-grown, buggy beast that nobody understood. Although it originated from some old auto-thing it was no standard thing at all, it was specific to LyX. The auto-tools are standard, and are very powerful. I think nobody of us really likes them, but the big difference to configure.m4 is that they are maintained by other people, and the part that we have to do ourselves is well documented. It may not be easy for an m4 newcomer, but the manuals exist, and are IMHO not too bad. Georg
