Re: proposal: inetd improvements.

[Julio Merino <jmmv%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 12:43 PM, der Mouse 
<mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost> wrote:
>>       9.  convert it to libevent for portability and provide autoconf
>>           so that it can be built on other OSes (not used on NetBSD
>>           of course).
>
> Well, IMO autoconf is not an improvement.  My opinion on autoconf (or
> more precisely on configure scripts, especially autoconf-generated
> configure scripts) can be found in my blah post of last November at
> ftp.rodents-montreal.org:/mouse/blah/2009-11-20-1.html (also available
> over HTTP at
> http://ftp.rodents-montreal.org/mouse/blah/2009-11-20-1.html).

You are basing your rants on incorrectly written configure scripts,
not on the tool itself.  Portability is hard, period.  Specially if
the developer doesn't have access to obscure architecture/system
combinations.

autoconf is just a tool to aid the developer in making the code more
portable, but it is not a magic ball -- it just can't be.  It has a
few benefits though: it is widespread (so it's known), it generally
works for most stuff, it can be made to be packager-friendly and its
documentation includes tons of wisdom re. portability issues.

This reminds me of an article I wrote a while ago (being that 5 years
ago, I'd have written things differently today, but most of the points
in there are still valid):

    http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/31/packaging.html
    http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/04/28/packaging2.html?page=2

Regarding security, well... nothing prevents you to audit the
configure.ac file, which is much much simpler, and regenerating the
configure script manually before running it.

-- 
Julio Merino