considering using autoconfig?

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Fri Dec 8 18:44:18 UTC 2006


On Friday 08 December 2006 12:39 am, Yuwen Dai wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> When I was testing the svn version of busybox, I found busybox could be
> compiled with a higher glibc version, while could not with a lower version.
> For example, the macro `__GLIBC__' referenced in makedev.c  is defined in
> different header files.  Are busybox developer considering using autoconfig?

I always considered autoconf and automake to be some of the worst examples of 
the Free Software Foundations' bloat, lack of taste, and outright insanity.

Not that it's my decision anymore, but it would be easier, more portable, and 
more reliable to write a configuration system from scratch, by hand, than to 
use autoconf.  (For one thing, autoconf and cross-compiling just don't mix.  
For another it doesn't magically make things work on platforms they didn't 
work on before, it's the developer who has to add tests and use the results.)

> best regards,
> Yuwen

Rob
-- 
"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery



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