[poppler] RFC: Dropping autotools

[Jan-Erik S]

On fre, 2017-08-18 at 00:13 +0200, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> Ok, this is going to be controversial (or maybe not).
> 
> I'd like to drop autotools and just use cmake as build system.
> 
> Reasons:
>  * I don't use autotools so whenever something new happens i regularly forget 
> to try it works there (as proven last time with the nss includes)
>  * cmake is more portable (i.e. doesn't uses shell scripts)
>  * cmake gets releases more often
>  * cmake code is easier to read (for me)
>  * AFAICS Not even gnome (which was the "last" big autotools user) plans to 
> use autotools anymore
> 
> 
> Only issues:
>  * We don't have gtk-doc support
>  * We don't have make dist-xz support (which i use for releases)
> 
> 
> But i'm sure both should be fairly easy to add, just never cared to do it 
> since the only times i use them are for releases.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Cheers,
>   Albert

I agree with the general idea, but I see at least one more (potential)
issue: what cmake version the major distributions support.

I would suggest delaying this until all (or most) major distributions
have, or at least are planning to support, a sufficiently capable cmake
version in their latest long term support version (if they have them) or
latest stable version otherwise.

Regards, Jan-Erik