Re: Future plans for Autotools

[Karl Berry]

Hi Yvan - sorry for the delayed reply.

    While configure/automale/libtool seem to be designed to work together,

Yes, they were. It seems your major issues are with libtool. I can
(uselessly) sympathize, but unfortunately that's all I can do. Libtool
is currently unmaintained (according to GNU records), so until someone
volunteers to work on it, there will presumably be no further changes to
it. (Maybe you or someone reading this wants to take up the challenge?)

    - but when it encounters .la files with incorrect .la files, libtool
    adds the incorrect dependencies or options, with no workaround

If you (or anyone) can provide a patch for that specific critical issue
in libtool, it might be possible to somehow make a bug fix release.

    - or make them more modular, and better able to work
    independently. This is probably more of a documentation / example
    code issue than an actual development issue.

I expect you know this, but Automake completely depends on
Autoconf. That's not going to change, in the current reality. OTOH,
using libtool is completely optional.  Many auto{make,conf} projects
don't use libtool.

For Automake, and I expect for Autoconf, specific documentation
suggestions are welcome, but I at least can't write anything from
"make them more modular", however much I agree in principle.

There are quite a few "best practices" autotools documents around, some
written by past autotools developers, others by autotools users. Sounds
like you have enough experience that you could write your own useful
addition :).

Best regards,
Karl