Android itself has serious NIH syndrome... [LWN.net]

Android itself has serious NIH syndrome...

Posted Nov 8, 2011 17:39 UTC (Tue) by cmccabe (guest, #60281)
In reply to: Android itself has serious NIH syndrome... by khim
Parent article: libabc: a demonstration library for kernel developers

> I know. They create their own mess instead. As usual it makes life easier
> for them (albeit not by much: lots of Android developers just like lots of
> Chrome developers hate GYP - but since they must support Windows it
> stays). When you develop software for android you don't need to bother
> with all that and use can easily use NDK and autotools.

I work on Android for NVidia. We do not use gyp. In fact, I am not familiar with that build system. We use the Android build system, which is simply makefiles which use GNU extensions. If you want to learn more about it, you can check it out here: http://git.android-x86.org/?p=platform/build.git;a=summary

I have developed software for Android before, including using the NDK. The NDK also relies on makefiles. There is no automake or autotools component. You have to write an Android.mk file to build whatever you're building. The Java software you develop on Android builds with ant. Again, there is no autotools.

What it boils down to is this: we both agree that autotools is mediocre at best. Are you willing to tolerate mediocrity? I'm not.

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Android itself has serious NIH syndrome...

Posted Nov 8, 2011 20:26 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Unfortunately, it appears that no potential replacement for autotools is sufficiently widely regarded as having a clear and compelling edge over it - indeed, most of them appear to be Marmite.