Build system (was Re: Future of KDE Development)

[Stephan Kulow]

Am Sonntag 20 Februar 2005 10:24 schrieb Guillaume Laurent:
> On Sunday 20 February 2005 01:35, Dirk Mueller wrote:
> > On Saturday 19 February 2005 23:14, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> > > Yes, you can also write maintainable code in Perl if you really have
> > > to. The point is that it's easier to do that in Python rather than with
> > > the current system, so people are more likely to do it.
> >
> > Well, thats entirely my point.. its much more likely to have a
> > maintainable automake file rather than a python script, because the
> > latter has so much more flexibility and power.
>
> No, because automake's syntax isn't expressive enough to cleanly write
> everything you need in a makefile. So you're bound to go down the same road
> which led from Makefile to autoconf and then to automake, piling up one
> fugly hack over another.
I think, we can argue pro and contra high level language in Makefiles for
quite some time without going anywhere. Perhaps it would help if you outline
what problems you have exactly with the automake syntax. Perhaps we can
lift the syntax a bit without giving all power away.

Greetings, Stephan