On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 11:26:46PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Peter Schaffter <pe...@schaffter.ca>: > > The build system > > > > - streamline the build system to improve flexibility and portability > > Nothing you can ever do with autotools will ever be describable as > 'streamlining'. It's a horrible, bloated, crufty mess that leads to > horrible, bloated, crufty builds. > > If I were running the project I would toss out autotools in a heartbeat > and replace it with something cleaner and more modern. My top choice > would be scons.
scons is closer to a construction kit for build systems than a build system, which makes it a pain to work with in any regular way from a packaging perspective. In particular I've never seen a scons-using project that has managed to get cross-building working right; whereas groff cross-compiles relatively easily out of the box today (you just have to do a separate native build pass so that it can build its own documentation). I'd hate to see groff switching to something significantly less battle-hardened. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@debian.org]
