[PROPOSAL] To retire autoconf for 4.1

[C.J. Adams-Collier KF7BMP]

Hello metze,

On Wed, 2013-05-22 at 19:04 +0200, Stefan (metze) Metzmacher wrote:
> Hi C.J.,
> 
> > Speaking as a build engineer responsible for compiling samba to run on
> > hundreds of systems, I would personally prefer not to phase autotools
> > out.  Many distributions assume that there is an autoreconf
> > -i ; ./configure ; make ; make install option available in software they
> > build for their platforms, and build engineers know the system well
> > enough to produce binaries.  Forcing build engineers to learn something
> > new will delay and in some cases remove support entirely for samba on
> > many platforms.
> 
> What in './configure && make && make install' (using waf) is more
> complicated
> than './autogen.sh && ./configure && make && make install' (using autoconf)?

It's not a question of difficulty.  It's a question of dependence on
external (or bundled) software which may or may not provide the expected
environmental details one comes to expect from auto*.  Does waf process
a config.h.in file to produce a config.h which can be depended on to
provide detected environmental minutia?  Are there multiple phases into
which the build systems can hook to assist in generating the correct
Makefile?  The devil's in the details.

> metze

C.J.

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