On Oct 23, Simon Cozens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> took up a keyboard and banged out
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 09:05:33AM -0400, Andy Dougherty wrote:
> > While imperfect and Unix-centric, we can (and should!) learn a lot
> > from auto{conf,make} and metaconfig.
>
> *nod*. I just had a look around, and most of the other languages are
> using autoconf. But then, most of the other languages don't run on
> upwards of 70 platforms. :(
>
> I wonder how serious we need to be about keeping that goal.
Surely we can be 'one-more' than the nearest competition, not a few dozen,
and feel proud?
> > One other thing that nearly all such previous auto-configuration systems
> > have in common is that nearly every developer of such a system vastly
> > underestimated the scale and complexity of the task to be undertaken.
>
> And that they're all disgustingly difficult to maintain and write scripts for.
> autoconf scares me, and the number of people really good at writing metaconfig
> units can be counted on both thumbs.
FWIW, I vote auto{foo}. The mindshare for this is considerable, actually.
All sorts of otherwise innocent people have skills with it. Frightening,
I know, but perhaps we should just make them comfortable about coming out
of the closet to help with the build system. :-)
Michael,
Who actually wishes his auto* skills were better.
--
Michael Fischer 7.5 million years to run
[EMAIL PROTECTED] printf "%d", 0x2a;
-- deep thought
