From: Adam Atlas Date: 18:22 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Autoconf and so forth God I hate Autoconf, Automake, etc. Mainly because I hate the whole "here are a bunch of shell scripts that process M4 scripts in order to generate some more shell scripts that generate a bunch of Makefiles that will hopefully eventually generate some executable code" thing... honestly, can't we reduce that to one step and one language by now? Dearie me. And also the "even though we're providing you with a hateful-but-at- least-functional macro language, you still have to include tons of retarded boilerplate code in every project even for really common tasks" thing. Not to mention the "this script was written for Autoconf 2.5999999998, so don't even think about trying to process it with Autoconf 2.5999999999" thing. (This thing called SCons looks like it *might* be a relatively-decent replacement for this whole mess. But I have yet to try it, so I do not yet know how much I will hate it.)
From: Benjamin Reed Date: 18:41 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Adam Atlas wrote: > God I hate Autoconf, Automake, etc. ... > (This thing called SCons looks like it *might* be a relatively-decent > replacement for this whole mess. But I have yet to try it, so I do not > yet know how much I will hate it.) SCons has it's own issues; it has some rather important holes in it's cross-platformedness, and an architecture that makes it difficult to fix them. That's the reason, more than anything, that we ended up with cmake for KDE4. CMake has some syntactic ugliness, but overall has worked very well for building a very large system. But you're right, autotools are crap. They're just ubiquitous crap with a lot of support, so they *seem* like a good solution. Until you have to use them. :P - -- Benjamin Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick Fink, KDE, and Mac OS X development http://www.racoonfink.com/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHFPfMUu+jZtP2Zf4RAqsfAJ4351j1QLXRDH+Pq8NHFEx4pxs1RACcClC+ 4V2hy4a77PjYw07YySHg6js= =HxNq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
From: Peter da Silva Date: 19:10 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth You need to know what to look for anyway, so unless you've got some kind of mega-huge application I'm really not sure that any of these tools are really going to be easier than maintaining your own configure script for the three or four non-standard pieces of information you actually care about, especially since a lot of the things you see these programs looking for are macros in standard include files anyway. And the most hateful thing about these programs is they make people think they're writing portable software, rather than hiding the places their software is making non-portable assumptions.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 20:38 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-10-16 20:20]: > I'm really not sure that any of these tools are really going to > be easier than maintaining your own configure script for the > three or four non-standard pieces of information you actually > care about, especially since a lot of the things you see these > programs looking for are macros in standard include files > anyway. I think if pkg-config can be assumed to be present and your build process and platform dependencies aren't too involved, you can write straight Makefiles that will pretty much just work. Admittedly my sample size is 1 and the sample is a small and simple one, but that's what I did with gtk-chtheme. I *do* have some parts in the code that get compiled in when the installed gtk2 is ancient but not when it's new, so my sample is not *completely* trivial either. So far it's been packaged on a huge variety of Linux distros and in several BSDs, and I haven't seen anyone having to patch build issues -- neither in the Makefile nor the source. Regards,
From: Sean Conner Date: 20:14 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth It was thus said that the Great Adam Atlas once stated: > God I hate Autoconf, Automake, etc. > > Mainly because I hate the whole "here are a bunch of shell scripts > that process M4 scripts in order to generate some more shell scripts > that generate a bunch of Makefiles that will hopefully eventually > generate some executable code" thing... honestly, can't we reduce > that to one step and one language by now? Dearie me. Wait? Are we talking about sendmail here? -spc (You mean there's something else besides sendmail that uses M4?)
From: David Cantrell Date: 14:24 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 03:14:51PM -0400, Sean Conner wrote: > -spc (You mean there's something else besides sendmail that uses M4?) I could tell you horror stories about a DNS hosting system that used perl to talk to a database and generate m4, which generated more perl, which generated more m4, which generated zone files. I might have got some of that in the wrong order, but the slithery tentacular nature of it is apparent I'm sure. But I won't tell you those horror stories, because I'm nice.
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: 23:59 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth David Cantrell wrote: > On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 03:14:51PM -0400, Sean Conner wrote: > >> -spc (You mean there's something else besides sendmail that uses M4?) > > I could tell you horror stories about a DNS hosting system that used > perl to talk to a database and generate m4, which generated more perl, > which generated more m4, which generated zone files. > > I might have got some of that in the wrong order, but the slithery > tentacular nature of it is apparent I'm sure. > > But I won't tell you those horror stories, because I'm nice. You are a horrible tease and a spoilsport to boot, Sir. You deprive this forum of its very purpose.
From: A. Pagaltzis
Date: 20:57 on 16 Oct 2007
Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth
* Adam Atlas <adam@xxxxx.xx> [2007-10-16 19:30]:
> Mainly because I hate the whole "here are a bunch of shell
> scripts that process M4 scripts in order to generate some more
> shell scripts that generate a bunch of Makefiles that will
> hopefully eventually generate some executable code" thing...
> honestly, can't we reduce that to one step and one language by
> now?
Not if you have the same aims as the autotools, I guess.
$ echo; info autoconf 'Portable Shell' -o- 2>&- | perl -00ne'print, exit if /compatible/'
When writing your own checks, there are some shell-script programming
techniques you should avoid in order to make your code portable. The
Bourne shell and upward-compatible shells like the Korn shell and Bash
have evolved over the years, but to prevent trouble, do not take
advantage of features that were added after Unix version 7, circa 1977
(*note Systemology::).
Regards,
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 21:33 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * Adam Atlas <adam@xxxxx.xx> [2007-10-16 19:30]: >> Mainly because I hate the whole "here are a bunch of shell >> scripts that process M4 scripts in order to generate some more >> shell scripts that generate a bunch of Makefiles that will >> hopefully eventually generate some executable code" thing... >> honestly, can't we reduce that to one step and one language by >> now? > > Not if you have the same aims as the autotools, I guess. > > $ echo; info autoconf 'Portable Shell' -o- 2>&- | perl -00ne'print, exit if /compatible/' > > When writing your own checks, there are some shell-script programming > techniques you should avoid in order to make your code portable. The > Bourne shell and upward-compatible shells like the Korn shell and Bash > have evolved over the years, but to prevent trouble, do not take > advantage of features that were added after Unix version 7, circa 1977 > (*note Systemology::). I maintain ExtUtils::MakeMaker, the thing that generates the Makefile when you type "perl Makefile.PL" to install a Perl module. It's a Perl module which generates portable Makefiles containing portable shell scripts that are sometimes Perl one liners which call functions in Perl modules. And unlike autoconf, this works on every Unix, VMS and Windows with just about every make, shell, C/C++ compiler and Perl version you can think of. Just when you thought you're done hating you realize one of the reasons Perl was written is so you wouldn't have to write shell code, much less portable shell code. We got so sick of it that we wrote a pure-Perl module installer, Module::Build. Even that is fraut with peril.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 22:21 on 16 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 16-Oct-2007, at 15:33, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Just when you thought you're done hating you realize one of the > reasons Perl > was written is so you wouldn't have to write shell code, much less > portable > shell code. I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. But then for me the V7 shell was an *upgrade*.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 00:20 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-10-16 23:30]: > On 16-Oct-2007, at 15:33, Michael G Schwern wrote: >> Just when you thought you're done hating you realize one of >> the reasons Perl was written is so you wouldn't have to write >> shell code, much less portable shell code. > > I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. Ah? Does your shell code run on VMS, Win32, Symbian, OS/390 and RiscOS in addition to *every* Unix and clone under the S^Hsun? Regards,
From: Peter da Silva Date: 01:27 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 16-Oct-2007, at 18:20, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-10-16 23:30]: >> I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. > Ah? Does your shell code run on VMS, Win32, Symbian, OS/390 and > RiscOS in addition to *every* Unix and clone under the S^Hsun? I write for open systems platforms. I *have* in fact run my portable shell code on VMS and Windows, mind you. Of course if you're configuring a portable software package to build native on VMS and Windows the shell is the barest whiff of the hate in store for you. RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems I'll add BeOS and AmigaDOS.
From: A. Pagaltzis Date: 01:52 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-10-17 02:35]: > On 16-Oct-2007, at 18:20, A. Pagaltzis wrote: >> * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2007-10-16 23:30]: >>> I find portable shell code easier to write and read than >>> Perl. > >> Ah? Does your shell code run on VMS, Win32, Symbian, OS/390 >> and RiscOS in addition to *every* Unix and clone under the >> S^Hsun? > > I write for open systems platforms. > > I *have* in fact run my portable shell code on VMS and Windows, > mind you. Of course if you're configuring a portable software > package to build native on VMS and Windows the shell is the > barest whiff of the hate in store for you. > > RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems > I'll add BeOS and AmigaDOS. I can't be bothered to check, but I'm sure Perl runs on at least one of those as well, probably both. MakeMaker needs to work on ALL OF THESE. It's as gruesome as it sounds. That's why people revolted and started a rewrite that doesn't rely on external tools. Just Perl. Well, except the new module has its own problems, and people (on Unices mainly, where MakeMaker works passably, I guess) are used to MakeMaker's, uh, quirks, so they dump on the new kid and... ... argh, it's a truckload of hate. Software hate, people hate, several more kinds of software hate, and some more people hate. Hate. Hate,
From: Peter da Silva Date: 02:20 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 16-Oct-2007, at 19:52, A. Pagaltzis wrote: > I can't be bothered to check, but I'm sure Perl runs on at least > one of those as well, probably both. MakeMaker needs to work on > ALL OF THESE. It's as gruesome as it sounds. Anything that has to generate native commands to build a software package on any significant number of genuinely different platforms is going to have to deal with more than enough hate that, well, I wouldn't dream of meddling with it. That's what the whole software tools movement (which more or less became the open systems movement) was supposed to eliminate. And for a while it looked that we were going to manage it. Until Gates got a bug in his tail about the Macintosh and dumped Xenix in favor of trying to clone the Mac. Hateful lack-of-an-OS and all.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 07:44 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth A. Pagaltzis wrote: >> RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems >> I'll add BeOS and AmigaDOS. > > I can't be bothered to check, but I'm sure Perl runs on at least > one of those as well, probably both. MakeMaker needs to work on > ALL OF THESE. It's as gruesome as it sounds. We haven't supported Amiga or BeOS or RiscOS in a while. I don't think Perl will run on them anymore. Lack of developers... and users for that matter.
From: Jonathan Stowe Date: 09:09 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 02:44 -0400, Michael G Schwern wrote: > A. Pagaltzis wrote: > >> RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems > >> I'll add BeOS and AmigaDOS. > > > > I can't be bothered to check, but I'm sure Perl runs on at least > > one of those as well, probably both. MakeMaker needs to work on > > ALL OF THESE. It's as gruesome as it sounds. > > We haven't supported Amiga or BeOS or RiscOS in a while. I don't think Perl > will run on them anymore. Lack of developers... and users for that matter. I tried to fix things to work on the Amiga some four or five years ago but lost interest as it become clear the UAE was intent on emulating the speed of the original hardware ... /J\
From: Martin Ebourne Date: 08:04 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 19:27 -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems I'll add > BeOS and AmigaDOS. Except RISC OS isn't dead. Sure, Acorn is long gone, but some other company bought the rights out and produces their own hardware and updated versions of the OS. And there appear to still be quite a few users as well. (PS. For the other poster, according to google perl 5.8.8 runs on RISC OS: http://www.cp15.org/perl/ ) Cheers, Martin.
From: Jonathan Stowe Date: 09:02 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 19:27 -0500, Peter da Silva wrote: > RiscOS? Well, if you want to include dead operating systems I'll add > BeOS and AmigaDOS. Strangely RiscOS isn't completely dead just not very well http://www.iyonix.com/ Unless of course you meant the BSD variant that ran on MIPS hardware.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 14:24 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 03:02, Jonathan Stowe wrote: > Strangely RiscOS isn't completely dead just not very well > http://www.iyonix.com/ There are lots of zombie operating systems. There's even people who'll sell you what they claim is BeOS and AmigaOS running on new hardware. There's precisely four OS APIs that it's worth writing new software for: * UNIX * Windows * VMS * Whatever IBM is calling the descendants of OS/360 this week. Of the four, UNIX gets you OSX, Linux, Windows (through compatibility layers or Microsoft's own hosted port of BSD), and VMS (through compatibility layers), and IBM mainframes (Linux on VM). For GUIs, things are more muddled. The choices as I see them are: * Win32 * .NET * Qt * Gtk * OpenStep/Cocoa common subset * Tk plus your scripting language of choice Have I missed any? I guess Motif's descendants are still alive. And all of them are so hateful they make me nostalgic for the days when I was only writing code to be portable between MS-DOS, VMS, AmigaDOS, Xenix, RSX-11, ISIS, AIX (back before they quit trying to turn it into part of SAA), and Exec-1100. And the first three are trying to be OS APIs as well (yes, Windows has at least three completely separate OS APIs to choose from), which makes things even more hateful. And I had hopes, back in the early '80s, that open systems would make this kind of thing a quaint memory of the mainframe era. Sigh.
From: Tony Finch Date: 18:00 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Peter da Silva wrote: > > There's precisely four OS APIs that it's worth writing new software for: > > * UNIX > * Windows > * VMS > * Whatever IBM is calling the descendants of OS/360 this week. What about AS400? Also there are some embedded OSs without POSIX compatibility, e.g. OS-9. Tony.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 18:37 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 12:00, Tony Finch wrote: > What about AS400? OK, add the rest of whatever IBM is calling the multifarious descendants of their Systems Application Architecture family this week. > Also there are some embedded OSs without POSIX compatibility, e.g. > OS-9. OK, guilty, I meant "general purpose OS". BTW, But as far as I can recall, based on my admittedly old (Coco- era) experience with OS-9, it's in the UNIX family. (UNIX and "POSIX-compatibility" are not synonyms)
From: Tony Finch Date: 19:35 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Peter da Silva wrote: > > BTW, But as far as I can recall, based on my admittedly old (Coco-era) > experience with OS-9, it's in the UNIX family. Er, yeah, sorry. It's quite hard to find an embedded OS that doesn't pretend to be unix. Tony.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 20:21 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 13:35, Tony Finch wrote: > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Peter da Silva wrote: >> BTW, But as far as I can recall, based on my admittedly old (Coco- >> era) >> experience with OS-9, it's in the UNIX family. > Er, yeah, sorry. It's quite hard to find an embedded OS that doesn't > pretend to be unix. RT-11, RTE-IV, RSX-11, RMX-86, ...? :) Can't think of any examples that weren't already in the pipeline in 1980 though.
From: Tony Finch Date: 15:09 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Peter da Silva wrote: > On 17-Oct-2007, at 13:35, Tony Finch wrote: > > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Peter da Silva wrote: > > > BTW, But as far as I can recall, based on my admittedly old (Coco-era) > > > experience with OS-9, it's in the UNIX family. > > > Er, yeah, sorry. It's quite hard to find an embedded OS that doesn't > > pretend to be unix. > > RT-11, RTE-IV, RSX-11, RMX-86, ...? Three of those are dead minicomputer OSs so don't really count as embedded in my books. RMX is windows-oriented but seems to have its own APIs. An interesting beast - there aren't many OSs that use segment registers (for more than just setting up the 32 bit flat memory model) and multiple security rings on the x86. Tony.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 15:54 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 18-Oct-2007, at 09:09, Tony Finch wrote: >>> Er, yeah, sorry. It's quite hard to find an embedded OS that doesn't >>> pretend to be unix. >> RT-11, RTE-IV, RSX-11, RMX-86, ...? > Three of those are dead minicomputer OSs so don't really count as > embedded > in my books. RT-11 and RSX-11 are still maintained and supported by Mentec, on real and emulated hardware. And pretty much any "pre-UNIX" embedded OS is going to be mini-based, given the timeframe. > RMX is windows-oriented but seems to have its own APIs. RMX has been retargeted as a hosted system, but it was definitely a complete standalone embedded os in the '80s and early '90s. > An > interesting beast - there aren't many OSs that use segment > registers (for > more than just setting up the 32 bit flat memory model) and multiple > security rings on the x86. Well, it was written by Intel. :) One of the things that really made me a hero at ABB was working on a project to automate converting PL/M-86 for RMX into maintainable (if ugly) portable C code. The hardest part wasn't the segment registers, surprisingly, it was figuring out what code using "AND" and "OR" needed to be "&" and "|" and which needed to be "&&" and "||". I don't recall if it was Randy or Walker who came up with the solution... we converted BOTH to the same thing and then ran flexelint over it and changed the ones that it complained about.
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: 18:41 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth > > > There's precisely four OS APIs that it's worth writing new software for: > > > > * UNIX > > * Windows > > * VMS > > * Whatever IBM is calling the descendants of OS/360 this week. > > What about AS400? > > Also there are some embedded OSs without POSIX compatibility, e.g. OS-9. Disclaimer: the following is NOT a sample of an operating system you want to target. As the maintainer of CPAN I once in a while get asked for Perl for platform X, and our list is pretty good: http://www.cpan.org/ports/ I believe we are up there with kermit, zip, and gcc. I think so far the most exotic request was Primos. After some research I concluded that the SDKs available for Primos were Fortran and COBOL (and presumably some macroassembler, but not the one called C), I had to mournfully reply that sorry, Perl is unlikely to run in your system.
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: 18:43 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth I think so far the most exotic request was Primos. After some > research I concluded that the SDKs available for Primos were Fortran > and COBOL (and presumably some macroassembler, but not the one called > C), I had to mournfully reply that sorry, Perl is unlikely to run in > your system. Sorry, also PL/P and Modula-2. Rocking.
From: Aaron J. Grier Date: 02:17 on 27 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 01:41:58PM -0400, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: > I think so far the most exotic request was Primos. After some > research I concluded that the SDKs available for Primos were Fortran > and COBOL (and presumably some macroassembler, but not the one called > C), I had to mournfully reply that sorry, Perl is unlikely to run in > your system. nobody's written a C compiler in fortran? (I guess g77 counts as a fortran compiler written in C)
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 07:47 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth Peter da Silva wrote: > On 16-Oct-2007, at 15:33, Michael G Schwern wrote: >> Just when you thought you're done hating you realize one of the >> reasons Perl >> was written is so you wouldn't have to write shell code, much less >> portable >> shell code. > > I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. As there is no such thing as portable shell code across the platforms named, you must generate tailored code for each platform and make version, you are failing to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Everyone does.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 13:59 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 01:47, Michael G Schwern wrote: > As there is no such thing as portable shell code across the > platforms named, > you must generate tailored code for each platform and make version, > you are > failing to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. The problem is nowhere near as hateful as writing the application to be portable across all those platforms in the first place.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 01:55 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth Peter da Silva wrote: > On 17-Oct-2007, at 01:47, Michael G Schwern wrote: >> As there is no such thing as portable shell code across the platforms >> named, >> you must generate tailored code for each platform and make version, >> you are >> failing to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. > > The problem is nowhere near as hateful as writing the application to be > portable across all those platforms in the first place. No, trust me, really. It isn't. It is much easier to write a portable Perl program then to write a portable Makefile / shell installer. Perl at least attempts to act the same everywhere. With shells and makes, forget it. Different dialects, different external commands, different file path syntaxes, different versions, different limitations, different installations. Are you running the BSD or GNU file tools? What version? Or maybe GNV where some stuff works but a lot does not. Is it tar or gtar? make, dmake, nmake 1.5, nmake 5, gmake, BSD make, Solaris make, mms or mmk? Is /bin/sh really sh or something trying to emulate sh and getting it wrong? Do we quote with single or double quotes? And bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs in all those different utilities to work around.
From: Peter da Silva Date: 02:27 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 19:55, Michael G Schwern wrote: > Peter da Silva wrote: >> The problem is nowhere near as hateful as writing the application >> to be >> portable across all those platforms in the first place. > > No, trust me, really. It isn't. > > It is much easier to write a portable Perl program I'm not talking about writing a portable script. If a scripting language doesn't tend to make all programs portable in the first place, it's a pretty poor scripting language, an much as I hate Perl I don't think it's that. I'm talking about writing portable applications in general. Perl, for example, is what I think of as a portable application. If you're talking about an application in Perl, why would your installer not ALREADY be a Perl script? Why would anyone be building Makefiles and the like to install Perl scripts? That's not just confusing me, it sounds hateful and foolish.
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 03:38 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth Peter da Silva wrote: > If you're talking about an application in Perl, why would your installer > not ALREADY be a Perl script? Why would anyone be building Makefiles and > the like to install Perl scripts? That's not just confusing me, it > sounds hateful and foolish. It was a decision made long ago, but the reasoning goes something like this... We need a build system that can do recursive dependencies and be quiescent about already built parts of the system. make does that. Everybody knows how to write Makefiles and you need make to build Perl so everybody already has make installed! It would be a waste of time to reimplement what make already does, so let's just write something to write a Makefile. This is over 13 years ago when Perl only ran on Unix, and it made some sense then. Now it's absurd, I agree. This is, after all, hates software.
From: Robert Rothenberg
Date: 12:16 on 17 Oct 2007
Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth
On 16/10/07 22:21 Peter da Silva wrote:
> I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bash 3.1 or 3.2?
From: Peter da Silva Date: 14:29 on 17 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 17-Oct-2007, at 06:16, Robert Rothenberg wrote: > On 16/10/07 22:21 Peter da Silva wrote: >> I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Bash 3.1 or 3.2? I try and avoid using any constructions that weren't in the Bourne shell on Version 7. I am willing to use shell functions, with care. Don't get me started on the hatefulness of bash and zsh. Just... don't. The margins are not big enough to hold the bile.
From: demerphq Date: 01:21 on 18 Oct 2007 Subject: Re: Autoconf and so forth On 10/16/07, Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > On 16-Oct-2007, at 15:33, Michael G Schwern wrote: > > Just when you thought you're done hating you realize one of the > > reasons Perl > > was written is so you wouldn't have to write shell code, much less > > portable > > shell code. > > I find portable shell code easier to write and read than Perl. "portable shell code" is an oxymoron.
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