Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Why autoconf in system?
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:43:17
Message-Id: 200509121438.46208.pauldv@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Why autoconf in system? by Frank Schafer
1 On Monday 12 September 2005 14:26, Frank Schafer wrote:
2 > Hi,
3 >
4 > we meet often the (faulty) notion that autoconf/automake (even a couple
5 > of versions on gentoo) is a dependency for packages.
6 >
7 > This is true only for development of these packages itself.
8 > Autoconf/automake provides tools to GENERATE configure scripts. Both are
9 > totally unnecessary to build a package or run the programs it provides.
10 > I've built a full featured LFS system not long ago without even
11 > autoconf/automake installed.
12 >
13 > I'd suggest to remove the build of autoconf/automake from ``emerge
14 > system''. I'd leave all of the autoconf/automake versions in portage
15 > tough for the case someone wants to involve in development of some
16 > package.
17
18 One reason is that there are many packages that have faulty/incomplete
19 versions of the scripts, or that have patches applied to the configure
20 script. For those packages automake/autoconf must be installed at make time
21 as automake/autoconf must be ran during the building of those packages.
22
23 Paul
24
25 --
26 Paul de Vrieze
27 Gentoo Developer
28 Mail: pauldv@g.o
29 Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net