Re: Future plans for Autotools

[John Calcote]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 12:26 PM Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> wrote:

> On 2021-01-25, Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:
> > I'm not at all familiar with Automake's internals, but the reason I
> > suggested taking advantage of GNU make extensions was the potential
> > for _complexity_ reduction of the generated Makefile, not performance.
> > For instance, this generated rule from one of my other projects [...]
>
> To be honest if Automake-generated Makefile.in files only worked
> for users with, say, sufficiently modern versions of GNU Make, I'm
> not sure there would be any point in using Automake.
>

I'm not sure I see your point Nick. Why use Automake? Because I'd much
rather write
(and maintain) two lines of automake code than even a single page of GNU
make code.

It sounds like you're a GNU make expert (in fact, I know you are ;) ).
That's great, but
we should not assume everyone wants to be a GNU make expert. Automake
syntax
is almost trivial to learn and use and it generates a significant amount of
detailed
make code that I don't want to have to memorize how to do every time I
create
a new makefile.

John