On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Now, in this case, it was only one tweak and other responders have
> > already pointed him in the right direction. So just making that tweak
> > manually is probably the sane thing to do in this situation.
> >
> > But I wanted to point out that autoconf is not totally without value
> > here.
>
> I am not saying something that strong, either. If autoconf generated
> configure works _for you_ without hassle, great. Keep using it.
>
> The original message that started this thread was what to do when it does
> NOT work for you, and my point was in general it is much nicer to point at
> the knob to tweak from the make invocation command line (or in config.mak)
> than having you spend time on upgrade autoconf, generate configure and run
> it.
Actually, guys, if you go back and re-read my original message, I was
pointing out that if you use a 'git clone' to get a build tree, THERE IS
NO CONFIGURE SCRIPT in the tree.
The problem is not that the configure script does not work. I pointed
out in the first paragraph that the configure script in the TARBALL
works just fine. What I pointed out is that the build tree DOES NOT
PROVIDE THE CONFIGURE SCRIPT. All I asked you to do is to consider
adding the configure script to the repository so that it gets pushed out
in a clone.
> Fanboys may say that autoconf generated configure is the greatest thing
> since sliced bread. But let's face it. Honestly, the track record of
> those people in keeping autoconf part in this project up-to-date has not
> been all that great. There are things that the generated configure file
> does not detect nor configure correctly (we had --with-expat patch, and we
> also saw "the trailing slash in template_dir definition in config.mak.in"
> discussed fairly recently). You are much better off tweaking known
> peculiarity of your platform in config.mak, when configure does not work
> out of box for you.
I've been building and installing multi-platform *nix software on
various flavors for two decades now. "./configure && make && make install" has
been the standard build process even before GNU. The whole point of
autoconf/configure/make tools is to eliminate the need to manually tweak
makefiles so that software is easily portable between platforms.
I got such a rash of SNOTTY messages from you folks, all directed to me
privately, that I nearly deleted git from my laptop altogether. You can be
sure I will not bother attempting to build git from a clone ever again.
I took the time to debug and diagnose the build failures I was getting,
and I tried to politely pass it along in case anyone cares.
Clearly, you don't. I shall not waste your or my time any further.
--
Joi Ellis
gyles19@xxxxxxxx
No matter what we think of Linux versus FreeBSD, etc., the one thing I
really like about Linux is that it has Microsoft worried. Anything
that kicks a monopoly in the pants has got to be good for something.
- Chris Johnson
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