pkg-config has a nice replacement in pkgconf. (If a list is
created, might be helpful to list possible replacements already out
there.) Would like to see some of the pieces that are essential parts of
the GNU build system/autotools replaced with some more efficient
[...]
of unnecessary work to port applications. Would rather see the current
build systems already used (autotools, cmake, etc.) streamlined or see drop
in replacements that are better designed.
I seem to recall an effort somewhere to do exactly this, but I can't
remember where I saw it..
Here too, one option would be to have all of a library's options,
dependencies, and build steps represented in a
real database
(my preference would be PostgreSql), and then have the actual build
script(s) generated using command-line utilities. This is something
that I have been doing in a rather miniature scale in a few
research-related projects, and found to be both effective and
expandable. Arguably, for all projects beyond a certain degree of
complexity, using a database to manage the build is the most
feasible path to follow (no need to name projects that demonstrate
what happens if you don't...), yet switching an existing build
system to one that is database-driven could become quite a
challenge.