Build system (was Re: Future of KDE Development)

[Guillaume Laurent]

On Sunday 20 February 2005 11:15, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> 
> 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.

- it doesn't provide anything for configure checks

- trailing '\' for line continuation

- for a single target, you define a set of random named variables, 
(bin_PROGRAMS, foo_SOURCES, foo_LDADD) and if one of the names is wrong, I 
won't get a clear error message about it.

- There's $(VARIABLE) for predefined vars (and again, I won't get an error if 
I get the name wrong, say $(LIBQT) instead of $(LIB_QT)), and @VARIABLE@ for 
those found through autoconf

All in all, it will never let me write something like

haveLibFoo = CheckForLib("foo")

if haveLibFoo
  src += "foodriver.cpp"
else
 src += "nulldriver.cpp"


-- 
      Guillaume.
      http://www.telegraph-road.org