On Aug 3, 2000, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As I said before, Akim's approach is a strict subset of yours, so it is
> obviously simpler *to implement*.
But it's not simpler to use, and that's why I'm fighting so much for
my point. I don't care about what design is easier to implement, I
care about what users will find easier to use. If simplicity of
implementation is the rule you're using to make the decision, we
should stick with the all-in-aclocal.m4 approach.
> We can always add more functionality to autoreconf later if we find
> a documented (rather than your `anticipated') need.
Look, people with whom I work in certain free software packages are
sufficiently troubled by the complexity of the auto* tools that I fear
yet another ``minor'' complexity will just make them give it all up.
I don't want people to give up autoconf because they find it too
complex. I want to keep it simple for people who are not masters. If
this means we won't have built-in support for the needs of masters,
because, as you say, it would be more difficult to implement, then we
shouldn't have built-in support for the needs of masters.
But I want to accommodate the needs of both kinds of users of autoconf
(and, in fact, of any kind of user in between).
If we're going with a simpler solution at first, to be later possibly
grown to a more sophisticated scheme, I suggest that we go with
everything in a single aclocal.m4. People should still be able to
manually add m4_include statements to aclocal.m4 to separate m4 files
they wish to, but if offering the ability of autoconf to serve all
kinds of users is ``too complicated'', then I suggest that we favor
the beginners, so that they may eventually become masters, than favor
the masters and never have any more users.
I'll shut up now. If you all won't listen to my arguments, or won't
agree with my intention of serving beginners as well as masters, I
won't waste more of my time trying to change your minds. I'd better
just hope you're making the right choice, and my intuition is fooling
me this time.
Maybe you masters who think your convenience is more important than
simplicity for beginners should talk to some beginners about that, and
ask them what they think.
--
Alexandre Oliva Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer aoliva@{cygnus.com, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me
