[PROPOSAL] To retire autoconf for 4.1

[Michael Adam]

Hi Andrew,

I agree that 4.1 would be a good opportunity to remove the
support for the autoconf build, as I am personally confident
enough with the waf build as the major build system.

But I think before taking the step, we should verify
the current state of the config results - the bug #8969
you mentioned has not been updated in a long time.

And maybe we can get some voices here of people using
Samba file servers on various Unixes and of the distributors
(of Linux, but also BSD flavours maybe).

Cheers - Michael


On 2013-05-21 at 19:08 +1000, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> G'day,
> 
> Michael Adam tells me he raised this in brief at SambaXP, but I wanted
> to bring it up here:
> 
> As we consider dates for Samba 4.1, I think it's finally time to have
> a discussion about removing autoconf.  I know this is controversial in some circles, so
> I have avoided starting this discussion for some time.  
> 
> Delaying this proposal has been useful, because in the almost 6 months since we
> released Samba 4.0, I've seen vanishingly few complaints about our waf
> build system.  Indeed, the users who seem to admire it most are those on
> the old Solaris systems, because they say it handles the use of
> non-system OpenLDAP libs better, and provides a modern kerberos
> bundled-in!
> 
> I've personally worked with a Solaris 8 site with the (sensible, for a
> system of that age) requirement that it not be directly connected to the
> internet, and it is from working with that user that the
> build_with_python.sh script was improved.
> 
> I'm not going to say that waf is perfect - it certainly isn't, but for
> Samba 4.1 and beyond, we should focus our energies on a single build
> system, and making it better, rather than continuing to build this large
> and complex code base with two independent build systems that we have to
> keep in sync.
> 
> The autoconf build system has supported us for a long time, but just as
> it is time that we retire SWAT, Samba 4.1 is the appropriate time to
> retire autoconf, and move to a single way to build a unified Samba
> project. 
> 
> That we are making a Samba 4.1 release without major feature upgrades
> makes this a particularly good opportunity, as users who might be
> adversely impacted (and not have noticed any of our previous list
> announcements, or BUILD_SYSTEMS.txt) will almost certainly be able to
> use Samba 4.0 as a fall-back. 
> 
> I'm sure many of you will have comments, and I fully acknowledge that
> the way waf was brought to Samba was not a pleasant process for any of
> us.  I hope that despite that pain we can still make a decision here.
> 
> Some background on the long slog to ensure config.h files match can be found in:
> https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8969
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Andrew Bartlett
> -- 
> Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
> Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
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