On Tuesday 22 November 2011, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > On 11/22/2011 01:13 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote: > > > When we introduced shell functions into Autoconf, and in general updated > > > Autoconf/M4sh/libtool for relatively new shells (new = newer than > > > Ultrix), it was successful exactly because no one noticed! > > > > Maybe a first step would be to rewrite many (most?) of the automake > > internals to take advantage of GNU make features, while retaining > > ~ 90% of backward compatibility; and only then start to improve the > > APIs and, where necessary/conveninent, breaking backward compatibility. > > I agree. However, I am not sure of the benefit except for Automake > maintainability. > Which IMHO would be a "killer benefit" :-)
But now that I think about it, a GNU make-based rewrite might also offer better extensibility (if we get the APIs right, that is), and that would be a *great* improvement over the current situation, and one which would benefit the whole user base (not only the maintainers). > One old (and fortunately :) never realized) idea I had was to rewrite > Automake in m4 as an extension of Autoconf. The main benefit would be > introspectability of the build process via m4 traces. This would indeed > be much simpler if you could base the implementation on GNU Make > features from the beginning; but Automake is a very mature program with > a mature codebase. > Regards, Stefano
