Re:Autotools Mythbuster
by kazinator on Thursday December 17, 2015 @05:33PM
(#10755102)
I'm on the side of testing for features in a realistic, reasonably modern context which takes into account a set of supported platforms.
There is no point in testing for things for decades-old systems if you don't have any users on such installations.
The Autotools approach isn't overkill; it's overshoot. To declare something overkill, it has to solve the problem fully. Most of the Autotools-build packages in a GNU/Linux distro will not work on ancient systems, so they don't actually kill that problem. Even if the configure script actually runs through (unlikely), it will fail to detect things that the programs need. There won't be any fallbacks and so things won't build. If things happen to build, they might not run properly.
Porting requires work. You don't develop on system Y and assume it works for users of system X because you're on Autoconf. To call system X supported, you get a system X box with a development environment and port X. That is why, subsequently, the configure script works on system X flawlessly and everything builds.
There is no point in testing for things for decades-old systems if you don't have any users on such installations.
The Autotools approach isn't overkill; it's overshoot. To declare something overkill, it has to solve the problem fully. Most of the Autotools-build packages in a GNU/Linux distro will not work on ancient systems, so they don't actually kill that problem. Even if the configure script actually runs through (unlikely), it will fail to detect things that the programs need. There won't be any fallbacks and so things won't build. If things happen to build, they might not run properly.
Porting requires work. You don't develop on system Y and assume it works for users of system X because you're on Autoconf. To call system X supported, you get a system X box with a development environment and port X. That is why, subsequently, the configure script works on system X flawlessly and everything builds.