[Linux-ha-dev] autoconf, portability [Was: Re: Heartbeat on Solaris?]

[Alan Robertson]

David Lee wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Michael Moerz wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Dec 15, 2000 at 03:12:31PM +0000, David Lee wrote:
> > >
> > > [ Note that some folk also talk about "automake".  I have not touched
> > > this, and I would suggest that we don't do so yet (or at all!). ]
> > >
> > You seem to have never used automake, do you?
> 
> He he he!!  You guessed!
> 
> Actually, I have tried installing "automake" (1.4), though only partially
> successfully (some of the "make check" stuff failed, and I never followed
> it through); never really tried very hard to use it yet.
> 
> In other software development groups, the balance of comments about
> "automake" also made me cautious.  (But then again, I have also seen
> negative comments about "autoconf", of which I am a great fan  So I
> mustn't attach too much weight in assessing those adverse comments.)
> 
> The only purpose of my saying "suggest that we don't ... yet" was that any
> autoconf change to heartbeat/stonith/... is likely to be non-trivial.  An
> "autoconf" change might lead us to think of doing an "automake" change.
> And that for stability's sake, these should probably be kept seperate
> (there is no necessity to bundle them, and several projects happily use
> autoconf without automake).


I have been happily ignorant of autoconf and automake, but all this recent
discussion made me decide to look around a little more.

Those of you who are interested in this subject will likely find this book
to be interesting:

GNU Autoconf, Automake, and libtool by Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom
Tromey and Ian Lance Taylor 

It is available online through this link:
	http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/

It also discusses a subject which has just come up...  Dynamic module
loading, and how to do it portably.  Probably also an interesting subject...

	-- Alan Robertson
	   alanr@suse.com