From: Timothy M. Shead (tshead_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-14 21:12:58
> We haven't considered installation too much yet, but it's in the works.
> Is libtool really the answer to everything on platforms where it's
> available?
Using libtool, a package that I maintain builds/links/properly installs
shared libraries under modern unices, static libs under older Unices
that don't support shared libs, and DLLs under Cygwin/Windows without
any intervention on the users' part - so I'd say "yes".
> If libtool is such a general build/installation tool, does it
> handle executables also?
Absolutely.
> If it does everything so well, why do people use
> other tools? I just want to get a balanced sense of its place in the world.
What other tools? I'd never heard of Jam until looking at the boost
source a few days ago, and Jam doesn't provide near the functionality -
it's fair to say that autoconf/automake/libtool is a complex solution to
a complex problem; with an autotools-based build, I can do
$ make distcheck
and sit back while the tools create a distribution archive in one
directory, unpack it into a second, cross-compile it into a third, and
run regression tests on the results, leaving me with a very high level
of confidence that the archive is complete and will compile for other
people. If I give you that archive, you can do
$ ./configure
$ make distcheck
and do the whole thing on your machine. Just about the only argument I
can think of against using autotools for boost is that the average
Windows installation doesn't have the environment necessary to run it.
Tim