On Mon, 29 May 2000, Steven G. Johnson wrote:
> The Autoconf macro archive (http://research.cys.de/autoconf-archive/) has
> a number of Java macros already. I haven't used them myself and can't
> vouch for their quality, nor do I know how they compare to yours, but it
> seems like it would be a good thing for you to take a look at them and
> coordinate with their authors. Ideally, you could merge the work, or at
> least benefit from the experiences that they've had, give everyone credit,
> and produce a single definitive set of high-quality Java macros. (Much
> better than to have a lot of different versions running around for no good
> reason.)
I have already looked at them. There were a number of very strange
things in that set of macros. In the end, it was just easier to write
up my own macros to invoke the compiler instead of playing around
with the ones on the macro archive. I am not trying to say anything
bad about Mr. Bortzmeyer or his macros, I just don't think they are
the right way to go.
> I don't know how the autoconf maintainers feel about it, but I don't think
> they should attempt to include this sort of major thing for the next
> release. Rather, you could post the results to the macro archive for a
> while, get feedback, and then after it had settled down and everyone was
> happy you could be devoured by the all-powerful Autoconf.
The thing I have noticed about open source projects is that the
only way to get things done is to decide on a goal and then do
99% of the work needed to reach that goal. Other folks are happy to
make comments on the work you did or polish up the 1% you did wrong,
but nobody is going to do the work for you. My goal is to get Java
support into autoconf so that I do not need to maintain my own
set of compiler macros. If folks can agree that Java support in
autoconf is a good thing, then I will do most of the work needed to
make that happen. I am not going to waste lots of time hacking
autoconf if people are not interested in adding Java support. It is
also a waste of my time to put these macros on the macro archive.
The macro archive is not the place for language support in autoconf!
If you want to get folks using and improving Java macros, you need to
make them part of the "standard" install.
Mo Dejong
Red Hat Inc.
