autotools gives autopain

[BJörn Lindqvist <bjourne gmail com>]

(Sorry for the inflammatory subject, it is meant to be
humoristic. Although it's true :))

Gnome currently uses the GNU Autotools for building all
projects. Autotools is hard to work with and complicated and there are
lots of techically superior build systems out there. Therefore, I
suggest that GNOME should gradually replace Autotools with scons
(www.scons.org). My arguments are:

1. Scons is simply technically superior to GNU Autotools - with a big
   margin.

2. Scons is simple to learn, Autotools is not.

3. KDE has already migrated to scons.

I suggest people give scons a try and it will become apparent how good
scons is (and how bad autotools is). Now my counter-arguments to the
counter-arguments I'm sure people will come up with:

1. Autotools have worked so far, why switch?

   - Because scons is easier and better. In the long run the benefits
     of a good build system outweighs the disadvantages of switching
     to it.

2. Autotools supports a huge number of platforms.

   - scons does too. Albeit maybe not as many. But it will, if major
     projects like GNOME adopts it.

3. Autotools have been a standard tool for over a decade. Scons is new
   and have not gone through the rigorous testing and enhancement
   Autotools has.

   - That is true, but if everyone used that logic nothing would ever
     change because everyone would stick to the proven and
     true. Besides, if KDE dares to switch, why wouldn't GNOME?
     http://dot.kde.org/1126452494/

4. Wouldn't this make building GNOME depend on Python? For some reason
   I can't/don't wanna install Python.

   - Yes. But every modern Linux distro comes with Python
     pre-installed. And if it isn't installed, installing it manually
     should be easy enough. If your system is so ancient that Python
     won't install, then odds are that GNOME won't compile
     either. Besides why would you wan't the latest and greatest GNOME
     on such an old machine?

5. The migration to SCons will be really painful.

   - Let's look at how KDE managed and learn from them. No change is
     without a price, but going from autotools to scons is worth it. I
     imagine that the transition can happen gradually and that the old
     build system will be retained for a while then deprecated and
     finally removed.

6. I'm not a big fan of Python...

   - Then try it. :) If you still are not a fan of Python then please
     realise that there are many more fans of Python than there are
     fans of the m4/POSIX sh/make language combination...

I hope my arguments are very convincing and not inflammatory. Let's
get some good discussion going.

--
mvh Björn