Re: autoconf, automake and friends

[Olivier <olivier at zipworld dot com dot au>]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 03:25:52PM -0800, Per Bothner wrote:
> I do, in Kawa.  Check out the CVS version of Kawa:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/
> 

I'll definitivelly have a look at your config scripts. 

> The plan it to be able to compile by
> setting JAVAC='gcj -C' but that does't work yet, and I haven't looked
> into why.

I had similar problems, for me that was only because of minor
incompatibilities in the 'classpath' command line argument:

   gcj --classpath=/path/to/libgcj.jar:... -C ...

while

   javac -classpath /path/to/tools.jar:...
         ^^        ^^

I could finally write a useful 'configure' script which let me switch
easily from Sun java to gcj. However I still find autotools marginally
useful, mainly because of the poor java integration. Automake is mostly
unaware of java and it is always a bit of a hack to get it to
do the right thing and Autoconf does not know about gcj.
I suppose, all these things should change with the increasing
popularity of gcj.

Finally I have to say that the time involve in getting a good
understanding of these tools is very high, autotools are everything
but intuitive for a newby (like I was/am). I get little motivation in
refining my project scripts while on the one hand I could do it in 15mns
with "Ant" or a Makefile and on the other it will take me hours
experimenting with subtle changes in Makefile.am.

Not a discussion for this list but I had to tell it to someone!

Olivier

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Olivier Louchart-Fletcher
Email: olivier@zipworld.com.au