Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 52, Issue 61

[Eric S. Raymond]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>:
> Sorry, but that's ridiculous.  Next you will tell us that invoking
> "configure" and "make" from the shell prompt is ``rusty and broken'',
> and is the reason for the fact that you expect the build to fail,
> because it's all too easy to try to run "make" before "configure" or
> misspell "make" as "Make".

I'm very, very experienced with these tools.  Enough so that the fact
that they have spiky bits that still gash me occasionally is not an
indictment of me, it's an indictment of the tools.  Yes, they were the
best we could do at one time.  That time is long past.

I've recently had the experience of converting a large project from
autotools to scons.  The difference is amazing -- the LOC of the build
spec files dropped by a factor of 17, the interface is simpler, and
entire classes of build problems just disappeared.

My point isn't to advocate scons specifically, it's to illustrate how
much better and simpler modern tools (like scons, or WAF, por even ant)
are.  We're accepting a lot of breakage and hassles by not using them.
Don't pile blaming the victims on top of that.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>