Re: TODO

[Daniel Reed]

On 2004-11-15T17:19-0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
) system incrementally.  There is also the point that the libtool which
) comes with a Linux distribution has likely already been hacked to be
) more lenient.  If FSF libtool becomes more lenient by default, then
) there likely little actual impact.

Just to address that last comment: Red Hat has shipped patch-free Autoconf
since Red Hat Linux 8.0, patch-free Automake since Fedora Core 1, and will
hopefully be shipping a patch-free Libtool in Fedora Core 4.


We do not modify these tools to work more effectively on Linux at the
expense of their support for other systems because, well, developers might
end up using them! And shipping software based on them. And, if and when
that software breaks, it would be the developer and/or the various @gnu.org
lists that get to figure out why (we would have been long disconnected from
the chain by that point). Time that could go into developing new features
and fixing real bugs would be wasted, so we lose.

(For that to make sense, keep in mind that, outside of the GNOME world, the
autotools are used primarily at packaging time, not build time. Having a
Linux-optimized Libtool installed on a Linux machine is not likely to offer
any benefit to people building software from source, just people who are
packaging software to distribute.)


We also do not modify these tools to work more effectively on Linux without
affecting other systems because, well, such changes should be made upstream!
This change should be made here! (Or not at all.)

(Retooling all of the software we ship to take advantage of custom
modifications to the build scripts really bogs down our build roots (and can
waste developer time, causing us to lose again). We primarily do it (retool)
now to take advantage of our multilib-aware Libtool.)

-- 
Daniel Reed <address@hidden>    http://people.redhat.com/djr/   
http://naim.n.ml.org/
The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly
degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere
generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable
of application to any particular. -- Eric Temple Bell, Mathematician