[ On Wednesday, February 6, 2002 at 20:17:55 (+0000), Nick Hudson wrote: ]
> Subject: automake's dependency on autoconf
>
> Could someone please explain to me why automake has a dependency on autoconf?
> As I understand things there is no definite need for Makefile.in to be 
> processed by an autoconf.

Actually yes, there is -- a great deal of need in fact.  Automake does
assume that Autoconf is used -- Automake's generated makefiles are
geared only to using Autoconf and Autoconf-generated 'configure'
scripts.  Automake also provides numerous hooks for use within
Autoconf's input (configure.in), and it assumes they are used.

Now presumably you could write something similar to Autoconf with all
the necessary API bits (there's quite a lot of messy detail) and it
would work, but for now no such critter exists so it's reasonable for
pkgsrc to link Automake only to Autoconf.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods@acm.org>;  <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;  <woods@robohack.ca>
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