Re: Problems with updating nearly any package meant for Cygwin or using packages such as libtool

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@cygwin.com>]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 02:07:25PM -0700, Eric Blake wrote:
>On 11/17/2011 01:50 PM, Dave Korn wrote:
>>>   Whoops, no they can't.  The hydra configure script isn't from autconf at
>>> all; it's just hand-written.
>> 
>>   Good grief.  It also has a Makefile.am and a Makefile.in, but it doesn't use
>> automake, and their contents are unrelated.  It just cats them together into
>> the final makefile!
>
>I love this quote:
>
>https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Pointers
>
>> As your software is distributed to more and more users, however, you otherwise quickly find yourself putting lots of effort into reinventing the services that the GNU build tools provide, and making the same mistakes that they once made and overcame.
>
>Autotools may not be the best out there, and might not be the easiest to
>develop with, but there's hands down nothing more complete and portable
>that could take over the impressive role played by the autotools in
>generating predictable configure and make setups.  It always makes me
>cringe to see other projects that just don't get that fact, suffering
>through the problems already solved by autotools.

Very true.

OTOH, I'd love to see some sort of competition for autotools.  I really
detest having to use them but they are much better than the alternative.

cgf