[article] trimming down autoconf's configure scripts by using pkg-config

[Alan Coopersmith]

So this seems to be advocating going back to the Imake model of having
to maintain per-OS lists of what works and doesn't, which is a huge pain
in the world of hundreds of distros with their own quirks, and a large
part of the reason Imake was dumped in favor of using autoconf to just
run the test to find out what the current OS supports without having to
have someone maintain a list.

This is a hell of a lot of work, and neverending as more tests & distros
will constantly need to be added to the matrix, for seemingly little
benefit.

	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering


Enrico 'nekrad' Weigelt wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> 
> here's a little article I wrote about an approach for encapsulating
> platform dependent stdc-lib fixes (ie. some platforms have broken
> string handling, etc) behind pkg-config.
> 
> It is mostly directed on autoconf (It is the one I have most of my
> daily trouble with), but of course the approach works with other
> buildsystems, even plain make, too.
> 
> 
> The permanent URL of the article:
> 
> * http://www.metux.de/articles/coding/trimming-down-autoconf-with-pkg-config
>     
> I'm also currently working on concrete wrapper packages:
> 
> * http://wiki.metux.de/public/OSS_QM_Taskforce/projects/stdc-pkgconfig
> 
> 
> Comments and suggestions please to the Maillist:
> 
>  oss-qm-discuss at metux.de
> 
> 
> Thanks.
>