Why Switch a Big Software Project to autoconf?

Posted by Cliff on Wednesday November 28, 2001 @01:58AM from the abandoning-the-custom-build-scripts dept.

woggo queries: "I'm a CS grad student working on a large research project (over 1 million lines of code, supported on many platforms). The project has been under development for several years, and the build system is nontrivial for end-users. We'd like to make it easier to build our software, and I'm investigating the feasibility of migrating to GNU autoconf. I need to demonstrate that the benefits of autoconf outweigh the costs of migrating a large system of makefiles with a lot of ad-hoc kludge-enabling logic. Has anyone made a similar case to their advisor/manager? Does anyone have some good 'autoconfiscation' war stories to share? (I've already seen the Berkeley amd story and the obvious links from a google search....)" Depending on the intricacies of the build process, such a conversion might take an awful lot of work. It might be easier to put a nicer face on the "nontrivial build process", although there is something to be said for the ease of "./configure; make; make install"

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you are bi assed by onShore_Jake · 2001-11-28 04:43 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I need to demonstrate that the benefits of autoconf outweigh the costs of migrating a large system of makefiles with a lot of ad-hoc kludge-enabling logic.

You sir, are ignint. It bothers me that you set out to prove something you are not sure of. You should be investigating if the benefits of autoconf outweigh the costs of migrating. Not just set out to prove something that will earn you geek points. You do a disservice to anyone simply interested in facts.