From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:37:19 GMT
Subject: Re: git binary size...
Message-ID: <43C693CF.3020800@zytor.com>
In-Reply-To: <43C65E70.7090702@op5.se>

Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>>
>> To make git not tight to Linux, but cross platform, consider autoconf.
> 
> git is already fairly portable without the autoconf hackery. It's easy 
> enough to move some of the conditional stuff out of the Makefile without 
> autoconf, but it would still require GNU Make, so there's no real point 
> in doing so.
> 

The problem is that one really at some point end up reinventing a whole 
lot of autoconf.

Now, a lot of autoconf ugliness comes from two sources:

  - Not abstracting appropriately (#ifdef mess)
  - Not using GNU make features

Once you require GNU make, you can have a top-level Makefile and have 
configure generating MCONFIG and config.h, and have conventional 
dependencies on those rules.  Pretty much the whole autoconstipation 
should be confined to those two files.

I might eventually try to make a clean patch for autoconf with git, and 
hopefully show that when done correctly, it's probably cleaner than the 
increasing Makefile mess, plus it's automatic.

	-hpa