[Asterisk-Dev] Converting the Asterisk code to autoconf

[Jerris, Michael MI]

> David Woodhouse
> I really don't think it's necessary. I've spent a lot of time 
> porting and cross-compiling software, and autotools are by 
> far the most common _cause_ of problems. There's nothing we 
> need from autotools that we can't achieve with a well-written 
> Makefile.
> 

You can't do certain things in relation to cygwin (as well as other
platforms that don't do lazy linking such as AIX and HP-UX) without
libtool in a sane and clean way.  They can be done without autotools but
require MUCH more maintenace and constant monitoring that would not be
required with a properly fully autotooled build.  Other things are much
easier as well with autotools, for example, instead of weeding through a
1000's of lines makefile to add sources for a new app, you add it to a
very small Makefile.am.  While the process of migrating to a fully
auto-tooled build will take quite a bit of effort, I can say, as I have
been watching the number of makefile/portability related issues going
through the bugtracker recently, that it will be MUCH easier to
maintaing going forward.  For example, compat.h and all the special
solaris header file stuff can go away completely, plus, we are also able
to properly ifdef things in code based upon having or not having
functions available or available in specific header files, which would
allow portability changes to the code requiring ifdefs to be a single
ifdef, instead of a string of commits for the same issue such as the
current run in streamplayer.c.

Mike