Choosing a new build system for Samba

[tridge at samba.org]

Hi Yannick,

 > I would *really* appreciate to be able to build samba without having to 
 > maintain a python package on my AIX systems.

As Volker said, that should be possible for Samba 3 in the short term,
but in the longer term it is less likely to be possible. We are aiming
to have a release eventually that combines the best features of Samba3
and Samba4. That would include the AD portions of Samba4 at least,
which are all tied in quite tightly to python.

So even without a new build system you should expect that at some time
in the future Samba will need python. How far off that is depends on
exactly how the merge happens, and that isn't clear yet.

Still, with regard to just the build system, I suspect that if we use
the staged approach that I've proposed then someone will maintain the
old s3 build system for quite some time. 

Cheers, Tridge