[MPlayer-dev-eng] autoconf

[Paul Jarc]

Arpi <arpi at thot.banki.hu> wrote:
> Now i see no advantages of switching to autoconf,

Autoconf's generated code is used *much* more widely than your
hand-written code, and so is more widely tested and less likely to be
buggy.  It also provides additional features that users are accustomed
to having, from other packages.

> especially that no one of the active developers knows autoconf
> syntax,

So this takes us back to "someone must volunteer to do the work".  I'm
considering it.

> and in my experience autoconf versions are not backward compatible
> sometimes, so running it is a nightmare, and as mplayer is used by
> users as cvs version, it may be a problem for them.

I've heard that the situation has improved in recent versions, but I
don't really know.  Regardless, there are some projects that store the
autoconf-generated files in CVS.  That way, everyone gets an
up-to-date configure script without having to run the right version of
autoconf themselves.


paul