autotools hurts my brain; it's a monster out of control

[Adam Jackson]

On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 10:29 +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 12:28:44AM -0500, Peter Jones wrote:
> > Responding to the correct mailing list for this discussion.  Cc:ing the other one.
> >
> > Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> John Dennis wrote:
> >>> I've had my fill of autotool problems (especially libtool)
> >>
> >> Don't throw in libtool with the rest.  libtool was available in the
> >> spirit of the auto tools only in its very first version (which of those
> >> reading this only Jim and Tom will know).  Then came the windows and
> >> HP-SUX idiots and ruined it.  I've for the longest time said libtool
> >> should not be used (and I don't do it in my code).  In the worst case a
> >> simple Linux-only replacement for libtool should be used.
> >
> > I agree that a Linux-only replacement for libtool should be used, if at 
> > all.  So why isn't there one available in Fedora that deps on "libtool" 
> > will pick by default?
> 
> No one has explained yet how these packages that don't use libtool
> will work when cross-compiling to Windows (or on HP-SUX / all the
> other platforms that have different ways to make shared libraries).
> 
> Really: use libtool, it helps.

gcc -shared works on windows now, you know.

If the assertion is that we still need to care about non-gnu toolchains,
then that's one thing, but if all libtool is doing is wrapping gcc, then
it's worse than useless.

- ajax
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