From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: steffen@sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:21:46 +0200 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ] In-Reply-To: <201709141111.v8EBBnXm021044@freefriends.org> References: <201709121535.v8CFZOuB015695@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20170913022333.GD24549@mcvoy.com> <201709141111.v8EBBnXm021044@freefriends.org> Message-ID: <20170914132146.KCMCk%steffen@sdaoden.eu> arnold at skeeve.com wrote: |Rico Pajarola wrote: | |> I also wept a bit when reading this. I once built gnome from source (don't |> ask why), on Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX. That was also the month I learned |> how to use "autoconf" and "libtool" as swearwords... | |Libtool for sure. Autoconf is something you have to come to a negotiated |truce with and then it's OK. :-) I cannot seem to reach that state. I see that the m4 directory of gawk v4.1.4 contains no less than 46 files with a total of 312 KB. On top of that the root directory contains some configure related files which sum up to about 500 KB. I do not know how much manual work was necessary for the files in m4, as i never have used autotools (except for a week or so doing something -- now obsolete -- for groff, there m4/groff.m4 is about 50 KB and handcraft). And when i look into the missing_d of gawk i cannot help to wonder what all that is for. But of course, what is the alternative? My MUA has a handcrafted 75 KB config shell script but the make system no longer could install: on e.g. UnixWare v7.1.4 because of problems of the system make last time i tried (we could outsource that as a shell script and simply invoke that though), it does not work on the Solaris 9 i have access to (via OpenCSW.org) because we cannot work around a SIZE_MAX iirc that is only defined but to nothing etc. etc. etc. |> But on modern Linux? That's not my experience. Maybe we just have \ |> different |> standards for "just works", but a typical "modern" open source project |> nowadays "just works" (for my definition of just works) on pretty much any |> modern system including FreeBSD (type: ./configure; make && make install). | |Like anything else, it depends on the quality, knowledge, and experience |of the developers. The problem isn't really the Autotools as much as |inexperienced developers who don't understand that all the world is not |Linux and who thus feel free to assume way too many things. | |We just went through the exercise of building the latest libpcap for |Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. Nightmarish, due to dependency upon |flex, which in turn took an act of Congress in order to get it to build, |particularly on AIX, but also not so easy on the others. | |OTOH, the older GNU projects, with experienced developers (gawk, Bash) |don't exhibit such issues. Plan9 shows an impressive beauty regarding this topic, but it, of course, is exclusive to a current Plan9. --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)