[Asterisk-Dev] autoconf in version 0.9.0?

[asterisk at lists.styx.org]

most of what i describe below is implemented, and will be
posted on the bugtracker shortly.

i would very much like for asterisk to support autoconf,
automake and libtool for the build process by version 1.0

the reason for this is these tools ease portability and 
allow for cross compiling with less headache. the idea
is to be able to build asterisk on any unix with a minimum
of hassle.

for those that may not be familiar, briefly:

 * libtool is a wrapper for the c compiler and linker.
   it knows about how to make shared libraries, and
   executables for a wide variety of systems
 * automake makes template makefiles from a 
   simpler makefile prototype. these are easy to
   maintain and simple to understand which makes
   adding modules, in our case very easy
 * autoconf makes a shell script, configure, which
   figures out where stuff is, and what sort of
   systems it is running on and building on and
   takes the template makefiles from automake
   and turns them into the final makefiles.

the problem with implementing this, is it is a big
change that will affect all users. it will take
some time before all of the testing is done, and
by its nature, it has to be tested by a wide variety
of people on a wide variety of architectures.

so how to do this in a non-disruptive way and dealing
with an innundation of complaints that "asterisk won't
build"?

easy. keep the existing makefiles. add in a configure
script and the automake prototypes. if someone wants
to use the new build process, run configure. it will
overwrite the distributed makefiles. otherwise, if
you just want to build asterisk normally, just run
make as usual after editing the Makefiles.

any thoughts?

-- 
/~\  The ASCII Ribbon Campaign
\ /    No HTML/RTF in email
 X     No Word docs in email
/ \  Respect for open standards