Hi Ralf.
On Tuesday 22 November 2011, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 11/22/2011 04:50 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> >>>
> >> 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).
> >
> > Only Automake maintainers (a diminishingly-small percentage of the total
> > user base) care about how easy it is to maintain Automake. The users
> > care about how easy and reliable it is to build the software.
> >
> > It would be useful to enumerate the user-visible benefits if Automake
> > can depend on using GNU make.
> It's hard for me to imagine any, because keeping Makefile.am's free of
> any proprietary make constructs (comprising gmake's) had been automake's
> job.
>
Not exactly; automake job's has been double-fold:
1. As you say, helping in keeping Makefile.am's free of "proprietary" make
constructs, *but only if the maintainer asks for it* (`-Wportability'
or `--gnu').
2. Offering well-tested and feature-rich implementation of common targets
and checks -- while trying hard to remain compatible with portable
make.
> That said, apart from the fact that each generation of automake
> maintainers at one point in his automake-carriere comes up with "switch
> to gmake",
> my feel is automake must not use gmake because (in theory)
> there should not be any to use gmake.
>
I don't understand what you're trying to convey here, sorry.
> > Another question is if GNU make is really good enough to warrant this
> > sort of change.
> Good point - gmake has a long history of "hickups" :-)
>
Care to elaborate on this? That sounds like something I should really
know more about.
Thanks,
Stefano
