Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Contact Us	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ	Sponsors

automake vs. GNU make

Posted Feb 8, 2008 0:44 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: automake vs. GNU make by aleXXX
Parent article: LCA: Disintermediating distributions

automake can't generate the commands libtool executes because automake 
runs on the distributor's machine, not the builder's, and doesn't have a 
clue what sort of system the build will take place on.

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Feb 8, 2008 7:20 UTC (Fri) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]

Ah, yes, indeed.
(I didn't work with autotools in the last years).

Then, couldn't the configure script handle that ? It runs on the build 
machine.

Alex

automake vs. GNU make

Posted Feb 8, 2008 21:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yes, it could: but in libtool 1.5 it doesn't :(

I never said libtool didn't suck. It's just better than anything else 
around right now for the job it does, and it has a *lot* of hard-won 
knowledge of shared library wierdness on manifold systems encoded into it 
(as autoconf does of other cross-system variation).