autotools hurts my brain; it's a monster out of control

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 00:41 -0500, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
> Peter Jones wrote:
> > Responding to the correct mailing list for this discussion.  Cc:ing the
> > other one.
> > 
> > Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> John Dennis wrote:
> >>> I've had my fill of autotool problems (especially libtool)
> >>
> >> Don't throw in libtool with the rest.  libtool was available in the
> >> spirit of the auto tools only in its very first version (which of those
> >> reading this only Jim and Tom will know).  Then came the windows and
> >> HP-SUX idiots and ruined it.  I've for the longest time said libtool
> >> should not be used (and I don't do it in my code).  In the worst case a
> >> simple Linux-only replacement for libtool should be used.
> > 
> > I agree that a Linux-only replacement for libtool should be used, if at
> > all.  So why isn't there one available in Fedora that deps on "libtool"
> > will pick by default?
> 
> There's one, called dolt.  Problem is, packages ship with generated files so
> they won't pick it up unless you want to do the 'autoconf; libtoolize;
> automake; ...' 
=> It's an alternative to developers, not an alternative "at
build-time".

> at build time, which breaks more stuff than it fixes.  dolt is
> not fully transparent.  One needs to add one line to configure.ac, but that
> can be worked around if we wanted to.