Message-ID: 067a01bfa967$11b62aa0$24a6d4d1@melange
To: "Chris Hanson" <chanson@totalint.com>, <tiff@olympiakos.com>
Subject: Re: SGI tiff 3.5.5 make install error .....
From: "Sam Leffler" <sam@errno.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 11:51:12 -0700
Organization: Errno Consulting
References: <AIG.AHY>
Sender: owner-tiff@olympiakos.com


autoconf works fine for me under cygwin on Windows.  But regardless, just
because the unix-specific pieces would be handled by autoconf doesn't mean
the other pieces couldn't remain as is.  I think that redoing the
unix-oriented platforms to use autoconf would be good.  In the past I have
avoided autoconf because it is complicated and arcane and I considered it
unneeded for such a simple bit of software (hell if you've ever looked at my
configure shell script for HylaFAX you'd know I'm no autoconf fan).  It's
matured however and is now the standard mechanism by which users expect to
configure and build free software.  Going to autoconf or some other tool
like it would hopefully simplify the work of people that integrate the
software into other distributions.

That said, I'm no longer in charge of what happens with this software.  I'm
simply voicing my opinions.

    Sam

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Hanson" <chanson@totalint.com>
To: <tiff@olympiakos.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 11:36 AM
Subject: Re: SGI tiff 3.5.5 make install error .....


> "Sam Leffler" <sam@errno.com> wrote:
> > The makefiles et. al. were written as SGI-specific (since I was at SGI)
and
> > then I provided "portability" to other platforms.  A rewrite to use GNU
> > autoconf would be a good thing.
>
> I strongly disagree.  One of the nice things about libtiff is that it
> isn't cluttered up with all sorts of autoconf garbage, so it's actually
> straightforward to compile on platforms that autoconf doesn't support.
> (Like, say, MacOS with CodeWarrior.)
>
> autoconf only works well if you assume all the world is Unix.
>


