Re: proposal to fork the build-tools projects

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Tom Lord <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 09:30:13 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> I would expect these forks to be very stable,
> tending mostly to be simplified over time.

I don't expect that.  On the contrary, many of the macros recently
added to Autoconf (and even-newer macros stacked up to be added to
Autoconf) are for GNU make, Bash, and other core utilities.

It would be nice to radically improve the autotools -- nobody's really
happy with the current status, after all, we just put up with it
because it's too much work to come up with anything much better -- but
it's not clear that a fork would be a good way to achieve the goal.

Also, the fork is not really the main issue.  The main issue is what
to fork _to_.  You like GNU Make, others like Perl, still others might
prefer Cook, Guile, etc.

> potentially radical, sweeping work that could benefit all the
> non-bootstrapping packages.

Sounds like fun, but it also sounds like a lot of work.  Got anything
particular in mind?  Preferably, something that has been implemented
and has a fair amount of use by outsiders already?  Autotools users
are a conservative lot, I'm afraid.