Re: What is BSD make?

[Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost>]

> autoconf was kinda cool in the beginning, but it too has grown beyond
> all reasonable levels.

I fully agree. autoconf is &%&%$%$.  Currently there are a number of
alternatives for automake/autoconf/libtool and make.

 >> 9) I'm looking for system (replacement for automake/libtool/make)
 >>   where I can write declarative Makefiles, just like that I can write
 >>   with <bsd.*.mk> scripts and BSD makes, but with problems mentioned
 >>   above solved. Any suggestions?  I don't want to reimplement the
 >>   wheel and implement such scripts manually.

> Me too!

> Simon's work goes a (very) long way, but it would be most excellent if
> it could be integrated into NetBSD, with mechanisms to make
> independent releases of just the make tools easy to create so users
> could generate them on demand for use on other types of systems.
I didn't try Simon's mk file yet. But if his mk files have the same
ideology as bsd.*.mk have, this whould be really cool if NetBSD will
maintain this project and will write software based on it (otherwise
maintanence will be fictitious!).  As I already said it is very
important for foreign developers to have a garantee that project (mk
files and bmake in our case) will not die in nearest future.  And
NetBSD's "protection" is good enough garantee, I think.

Another way is to improve pkgsrc's bootstrap-mk-files (support for
shared libraries on different compilers and systems, pthreads, 'make
depend' for different programming languages etc.).  I think this way
is better.

Anyway independent releases are really necessary. Testing?  Easely -
independant releases of NetBSD userspace ;-) I use some of NetBSD
tools under Linux, see wip/netbsd-*.  And I'm not alone. There is even
a Linux distro based on NetBSD usespace and Linux kernel. Ideally,
every part of NetBSD usespace should be available via pkgsrc and plain
tarball. Additional reason for this is portability of pkgsrc itself --
lots of packages fail on non-NetBSD because of lack of compress,
uuencode, dig etc.

> Such integration would help NetBSD both in spreading a good, clean,
> and elegant philosophy about build tools, as well as to help free
> NetBSD from being so tied to GNU C and binutils.
Agreed.

> Naturally the portable build tools would also benefit from the
> greater resources of more developers to help maintain everything.
One of the very first thing people know about NetBSD and pkgsrc is
"portability".

The most portable OS and cross-platform packaging system are good
enough platforms to develop build tools for crossplatform
development. Right? ;-)

-- 
Best regards, Aleksey Cheusov.