[Ecls-list] Rewriting autoconf -> autoconf/automake

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Nov 14, 2007 12:34 AM, John Wiegley <jwiegley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in my rewriting the
> autoconf system ECL uses?

This was rewritten to conform all autoconf quirks not so long ago. You
are probably looking at the wrong file: it is ecl/src/configure

>   1. I cannot build in a different target directory from the source directory.

Wrong.

$ ls /Users/jjgarcia/src/common-lisp.net/ecl
ANNOUNCEMENT  LGPL         README.1st  build.old  doc       msvc     src
CVS           Makefile     a place     configure  examples  old
Copyright     Makefile.in  build       contrib    log       refresh
$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir poo
$ cd poo
$ /Users/jjgarcia/src/common-lisp.net/ecl/src/configure --prefix=$HOME
> log 2>&1


>   2. ECL's top level configure file isn't autoconf generated

This statement is not right. ecl/configure is not autoconf generated,
but it is just a wrapper. ecl/src/configure is autoconf generated.
None are automake generated
but this is a different issue.

> ECL's Makefiles aren't all that complicated, so I was thinking that it
> would take just a couple of days to move to a fully autoconf/automake/
> libtool setup that could solve the three issues mentioned above.

Well, there are are two problems I see here.

* I do not want maintainance to be any more complicated.
* That would probably imply we have to distribute libtool around and I
am not sure about the issues.
* Furthermore, using libtool means we have to change the ECL compiler
accordingly and this may break some ports which do not use shared
libraries such as the Mac OS/X. (*)

So I do not think this is a two days job.

Juanjo

(*) NeXT port uses something called bundles, which are like DLLs but
with most symbols unexported.

--
Facultad de Fisicas, Universidad Complutense,
Ciudad Universitaria s/n Madrid 28040 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com