From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 18 16:18:15 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF9F016A4CE for ; Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:18:15 +0000 (GMT) Received: from lakermmtao05.cox.net (lakermmtao05.cox.net [68.230.240.34]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C47F43D31 for ; Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:18:15 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from conrads@cox.net) Received: from dolphin.local.net ([68.11.30.24]) by lakermmtao05.cox.net (InterMail vM.6.01.04.00 201-2131-117-20041022) with ESMTP id <20041118161814.QFFH2595.lakermmtao05.cox.net@dolphin.local.net>; Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:18:14 -0500 Received: from dolphin.local.net (localhost.local.net [127.0.0.1]) by dolphin.local.net (8.13.1/8.13.1) with SMTP id iAIGIDe2019463; Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:18:13 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from conrads@cox.net) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 10:18:08 -0600 From: "Conrad J. Sabatier" To: Jonathon McKitrick Message-ID: <20041118101808.11092f21@dolphin.local.net> In-Reply-To: <20041118160531.GA43779@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20041118160531.GA43779@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed-Claws 0.9.12b (GTK+ 1.2.10; amd64-portbld-freebsd6.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD equivalents of autoconf, automake, etc. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:18:16 -0000 On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:05:31 +0000, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: > > I'm starting to dabble in these self-contained self-building scripts > and tools and so on, like automake, autoconf, libtool, and so on. > > Are these the preferred way of doing things on FreeBSD, or is there a > better or more BSD-way of doing them? > > Some time ago, Terry Lambert suggested that tools such as imake were > vastly superior, and that the GNU tools were just to compensate for > the inconsistencies across Linux distros. He's probably right. :-) > I'd like to learn something that makes sense to learn because it is > practical, but at the same time, without sacrificing too much > portability. > > jm The main problem with the GNU auto* tools is their inconsistency across versions (which is why we still have several versions of each tool in the ports collection; not because this is A Good Thing, but because it's a necessity). A program that will build just fine with one version will generate errors or other problems with another version. Most annoying. -- Conrad J. Sabatier -- "In Unix veritas"