Re: 330-gary-ltdl-vs-need-lib-prefix-unknown

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Howdy Bob,

On Jun 24, 2007, at 12:22 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> Libtool has moved to a "Cathedral" model of development.  I don't  
> think it was always that way.  There was a time when libtool was  
> pretty rough around the edges and users did part of the testing,  
> with lots of subsequent bug reports.  The "Cathedral" model plus a  
> demand for absolute perfection has certainly made the 2.2  
> development cycle the longest in libtool history.  It is now even  
> longer than the multi-lingual branch which became 1.5.

I think the turning point was when we realised that I was the only  
one making deep changes, possibly because the barrier for entry to  
contribute at that level was far too high.  For a time I worked hard  
on simplifying the architecture in the hope that casual developers  
would be able to understand parts of libtool in isolation, and feel  
confident about contributing.  I appreciate that libltdl in  
particular contains more parts than before, but (apart from ltdl.c,  
which IMNSHO is still spaghetti) I think those parts are more  
straightforward than the 1.5.x monolithic ltdl.c.

Similarly, I think that (apart from the spaghetti core of  
libtool.m4), the m4 parts of libtool are cleaner and more modular  
than previous releases.

Unfortunately, we still haven't attracted that hand full of  
developers to help out with submitting patches to make deep  
architectural changes, so I am still the bottleneck when it comes to  
that, and I consciously rely on you (and if you're reading the  
patches list, that means *you*!) to provide the polish.

I'm sure that Ralf has similar complaints about being the only person  
performing thorough reviews.

> Regardless, I do think that when the 2.2 release does finally  
> occur, its quality will be far higher than any previous libtool  
> release.

Assuming that the human race hasn't transcended our need for a  
physical body, and the plethora of hardware and software we use to  
help us run our lives, by then ;-)

On a happier note, Libtool is still best of breed in its class, and  
even with all this time to play catch up, no one has come up with a  
serious competitor, so we must be doing something right.

Cheers,
        Gary
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