[Ecls-list] ASDF revolt

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Daniel Herring <dherring at tentpost.com> writes:

> [...]
> As an aside, I'm not sold on the value of logical pathnames[1].
> [...]
>
> This resonated with me and my experience in the C/C++/unix world.  The GNU 
> autotools are dominant not because they are easy to start with; they took 
> over because they do the right thing.  

Well, I've never been sold on the autotools either, and I'm not alone:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1877

> Configure is a self-contained shell  script; 

IMO, this is the only positive point of this system.   All the rest is
negative.


> the packager needs autoconf installed, but the user doesn't. 
> Only a decent shell, compiler, and make are presumed to be on the user's 
> system.  Configure detects the actual system behavior; it doesn't require 
> the end user to tell it everything, it doesn't rely on preconfigured 
> tables, it fails with logs about what went wrong, and it outputs 
> "config.h".  Once "configure; make; make install" are finished, the user 
> never needs to touch anything from the build framework.

Ok, you mean the packaging of the tool is good.  I agree.

We can agree that the user interface matters, but I've been told there
are also more fundamental problems with asdf, so perhaps there's no
point in solving the user interface part?

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__