2 Mar
2004
2 Mar
'04
10:07 a.m.
On Tue, 2004-03-02 at 08:37, Alfons Adriaensen wrote:
On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:28:12AM -0500, Dave
Robillard wrote:
The input files to a proper autotools-ized project are quite a bit
smaller and cleaner than a 400 line Makefile..
I agree it may be a bit more of a hassle to set things up than just
writing a Makefile (if you already just know make that is), but I tend
to look at things from a user perspective, and ./configure is just
simpler. Don't have to do something special for every damn app out
there..
-Dave
Fair enough. ./configure etc. is without a doubt
THE way to distribute
free software though. Most people find it quite annoying when an app
doesn't follow the 'standard'.
Users simply don't like hand-editing and copying configuration files
around. At the very simplest level I don't want to edit the Makefile to
make AMS use my preferred CFLAGS, and know where to find QT, and install
to /usr. I just want to "./configure --prefix=/usr" and be done with it.
On of the reasons I try to avoid automake/autoconf is that when for some
reason it doesn't work on your system, you're lost unless you are an
expert with those tools, and they are not the easiest ones. A cleanly
written Makefile is a lot easier to fix in that case, and requires less
expert knowledge.