[MPlayer-dev-eng] autoconf

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 01:55:37PM -0500, Paul Jarc wrote:
> D Richard Felker III <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
> > If our script is buggy we'll fix the bugs. Yes, every once in a while
> > someone commits dumb bash2-specific code to it, but the same mistake
> > can be made with configure.in! Just drink the cola, fix it, and move
> > along.
> >
> > If there are missing features in our script, feel free to add them.
> 
> Of course it's possible to do all that, but with
> automatically-generated scripts, you get these things with less
> manual effort.  That's my point.  Humans are free to work on
> interesting problems instead of plodding through code that programs
> are smart enough to handle.

>From my experience, adding the correct M4 macros to configure.in to
detect what you want is no easier than adding the shell script to
MPlayer's configure. I don't see how it saves any human effort.

> > but something the developers have to update every time they add new
> > optional features!!
> 
> Aren't they able to learn?  If someone volunteers to do the initial
> work and stay around to provide hand-holding when needed, would they
> still refuse to learn?

Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, I already know autoconf and find it
disgusting.

> >> there are some projects that store the autoconf-generated files in
> >> CVS.
> >
> > This still means any developer who wants to update the configure
> > script must have the right version of autoconf installed (bad),
> 
> It's not so bad, especially if all autoconf-related changes end up
> being done by just one person.  Even if it happens that one person

If that were the case it wouldn't be so bad, but that's *not* the
case. Developers are expected to write the necessary support code in
the configure script when they contribute a new feature. Otherwise
we'd have to have someone on staff all the time to update the
configure script, which would be dumb and wasteful.

> needs to have different versions installed for different projects, you
> can install different versions with different prefixes so they don't
> collide.

Yes but I will not pollute my system with such ugliness.

> > and it pollutes the CVS logs immensely since autoconf insists on
> > hard coding line numbers all over the generated file, making it so
> > even a small modification alters the entire file.
> 
> True.

Perhaps autoconf would be more acceptable if we ran it through a
postprocessor to remove all the line number crud. Still I think it's a
bad idea, though. We already have a very nice working configure
script, without any serious bugs. Like I said, if there are any
missing features you want to see, please add them and send a patch!

Rich