autoconf's goal [was: just one of a million reasons why autoconf...]

[Eric Blake]

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According to Paul Smith on 3/18/2008 12:53 PM:
| Since your last post seemed to be a bit more willing to engage in a
| dialog, I'll send this then I'm done.

| You have two misconceptions which are contributing to your frustration,
| I think: the first and largest one is that the goal of autotools is to
| make the maintainer's life easier.

| The second misconception is that you can greatly simplify package
| configuration by targeting what you call "the real world", implying that
| autoconf spends too much effort on obscure capabilities that no one
| really uses.

Thank you, Paul, for maintaining a calm mind and for attempting rational
responses even in the face of abusive language.  I liked your response so
much that I extracted some of the gems of wisdom from this thread, and am
checking the following into the manual.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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>From 24b636f7365d07134bf51831627e57429b5987e5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:05:42 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] Emphasize that ease of configure triumphs over ease of 
autoconf.

* doc/autoconf.texi (Introduction): Expand on primary
vs. secondary goal of autoconf.
* THANKS: Update.
Inspired by Paul Smith.

Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
---
 ChangeLog         |    8 ++++++++
 doc/autoconf.texi |   17 +++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index b017fcb..d676859 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+2008-03-19  Eric Blake  <address@hidden>
+
+       Emphasize that ease of configure triumphs over ease of autoconf.
+       * doc/autoconf.texi (Introduction): Expand on primary
+       vs. secondary goal of autoconf.
+       * THANKS: Update.
+       Inspired by Paul Smith.
+
 2008-03-17  Ralf Wildenhues  <address@hidden>
 
        * lib/Autom4te/FileUtils.pm (handle_exec_errors): New argument
diff --git a/doc/autoconf.texi b/doc/autoconf.texi
index 9593947..7cee3db 100644
--- a/doc/autoconf.texi
+++ b/doc/autoconf.texi
@@ -678,6 +678,23 @@ reason, it needs to be changed in only one place; all of 
the
 configuration scripts can be regenerated automatically to take advantage
 of the updated code.
 
+Those who do not understand Autoconf are doomed to reinvent it.  The
+primary goal of Autoconf is making the @emph{user's} life easier; making
+the @emph{maintainer's} life easier is only a secondary goal.  Put
+another way, the primary goal is not to make the generation of
address@hidden automatic for package maintainers (although patches
+along that front are welcome, since package maintainers form the user
+base of Autoconf); rather, the goal is to make @file{configure}
+painless, portable, and predictable for the end user of each
address@hidden package.  And to this degree, Autoconf is highly
+successful at its goal --- most complaints to the Autoconf list are
+about difficulties in writing Autoconf input, and not in the behavior of
+the resulting @file{configure}.  Even packages that don't use Autoconf
+will generally provide a @file{configure} script, and the most common
+complaint about these alternative home-grown scripts is that they fail
+to meet one or more of the @acronym{GNU} Coding Standards that users
+have come to expect from Autoconf-generated @file{configure} scripts.
+
 The Metaconfig package is similar in purpose to Autoconf, but the
 scripts it produces require manual user intervention, which is quite
 inconvenient when configuring large source trees.  Unlike Metaconfig
-- 
1.5.4