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Re: [CRAZY PROPOSAL] Automake should support only GNU make


From: Bob Friesenhahn
Subject: Re: [CRAZY PROPOSAL] Automake should support only GNU make
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:39:28 -0600 (CST)
User-agent: Alpine 2.01 (GSO 1266 2009-07-14)

On Wed, 12 Jan 2011, Peter O'Gorman wrote:

On 01/12/2011 12:01 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:

[About the purpose or "spirit" of Automake]

  Automake is about much more than just portability to different make
  implementations; it's about:

No. The philosophy of the autotools has always been to make the end users life easier, in part by not requiring any external tools, if automake were to require the user install GNU make it would be a break with that philosophy. I don't think that's a good idea.

While GNU make is a really good 'make' program, I think that 'make' in general is a flawed concept. If there was going to be a revolutionary change, then I would like to see a small embedded build engine be included which accomplishes the few functionalities needed from make, but also avoids needing additional programs. A little bit of analysis will reveal that Automake really does not require much functionality from 'make'. Probably 5% of what GNU 'make' is capable of. I don't like it that 'make' depends on file timestamps, and that it is unable to cache what was used to create the current binary, and that dependency information from the build system needs to be cached in 'make' include files.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/



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