Libtool / autoconf is evil

[Alan DeKok]

John Dennis wrote:
> I've got to agree libtool is evil, it causes more breakage than anything
> it purports to fix. Autoconf is a great idea, but a horrible
> implementation because of it's insane complexity and utterly unreadable
> machine generated code. It's wonderful when it works, but pure hell when
> it doesn't. I've found myself in autotool hell more often than I would
> care to remember.

  Yup.

> However, at the moment I don't know what a viable alternative to
> autoconf would be. I suppose if you believe you won't ever need per OS
> configuration it's not necessary, but are we at that point of
> compatibility?

  No.  Samba is switching to "waf", which is based on Python.  It works
for them, but I'm not sure it's OK for FreeRADIUS.

  I've been experimenting with some replacements based on GNU Make.
They look simple for the common case.  For the uncommon cases, we can
fall back to autoconf.

  Alan DeKok.