[MPlayer-dev-eng] autoconf (was: use gcc instead of calling ld directly)

[Arpi]

Hi,

> Gabucino <gabucino at localhost.localdomain> wrote:
> > D Richard Felker III wrote:
> >> The consensus is that it's the wrong thing to do and that anything
> >> autoconf-based will be immediately rejected with no questions asked.
> >
> > Agreed.
> 
> Could someone please explain why?  Or point to a specific thread in
> the archives?  All I've been able to find so far is that some have
> said autoconf (but not automake or libtool) would be ok if someone
> volunteered to do the work, and others have said autoconf is bad but
> have not given any reasons.

I said that long time ago, before Pl rewrote the configure script
from scratch in a modular (functions like cc_check etc) way.

Now i see no advantages of switching to autoconf, especially that
no one of the active developers knows autoconf syntax, and in my
experience autoconf versions are not backward compatible sometimes,
so running it is a nightmare, and as mplayer is used by users as
cvs version, it may be a problem for them.
(for projects releasing tarballs often it is not a problem, as the
tarball contains teh generated configure script)


A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

--
Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux - http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu