From: Eric Blake Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:05:42 +0000 (-0600) Subject: Emphasize that ease of configure triumphs over ease of autoconf. X-Git-Tag: v2.62~35 X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=a5406903ab886eb5d7a9207f89d2aff703d28ffe;p=thirdparty%2Fautoconf.git Emphasize that ease of configure triumphs over ease of autoconf. * doc/autoconf.texi (Introduction): Expand on primary vs. secondary goal of autoconf. * THANKS: Update. Inspired by Paul Smith. Signed-off-by: Eric Blake --- diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog index b017fcb3..d676859d 100644 --- a/ChangeLog +++ b/ChangeLog @@ -1,3 +1,11 @@ +2008-03-19 Eric Blake + + Emphasize that ease of configure triumphs over ease of autoconf. + * doc/autoconf.texi (Introduction): Expand on primary + vs. secondary goal of autoconf. + * THANKS: Update. + Inspired by Paul Smith. + 2008-03-17 Ralf Wildenhues * lib/Autom4te/FileUtils.pm (handle_exec_errors): New argument diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS index 8d83bbdd..e3102c1e 100644 --- a/THANKS +++ b/THANKS @@ -252,7 +252,7 @@ Paolo Bonzini bonzini@gnu.org Patrick Tullmann tullmann@cs.utah.edu Patrick Welche prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk Paul Berrevoets paul@swi.com -Paul D. Smith ? +Paul D. Smith psmith@gnu.org Paul Eggert eggert@cs.ucla.edu Paul Gampe paulg@apnic.net Paul Jarc prj@po.cwru.edu diff --git a/doc/autoconf.texi b/doc/autoconf.texi index 95939476..7cee3db8 100644 --- a/doc/autoconf.texi +++ b/doc/autoconf.texi @@ -678,6 +678,23 @@ reason, it needs to be changed in only one place; all of the configuration scripts can be regenerated automatically to take advantage of the updated code. +Those who do not understand Autoconf are doomed to reinvent it. The +primary goal of Autoconf is making the @emph{user's} life easier; making +the @emph{maintainer's} life easier is only a secondary goal. Put +another way, the primary goal is not to make the generation of +@file{configure} automatic for package maintainers (although patches +along that front are welcome, since package maintainers form the user +base of Autoconf); rather, the goal is to make @file{configure} +painless, portable, and predictable for the end user of each +@dfn{autoconfiscated} package. And to this degree, Autoconf is highly +successful at its goal --- most complaints to the Autoconf list are +about difficulties in writing Autoconf input, and not in the behavior of +the resulting @file{configure}. Even packages that don't use Autoconf +will generally provide a @file{configure} script, and the most common +complaint about these alternative home-grown scripts is that they fail +to meet one or more of the @acronym{GNU} Coding Standards that users +have come to expect from Autoconf-generated @file{configure} scripts. + The Metaconfig package is similar in purpose to Autoconf, but the scripts it produces require manual user intervention, which is quite inconvenient when configuring large source trees. Unlike Metaconfig