[Zlib-devel] Use autoconf for zlib?

[Greg Roelofs]

> I'm considering going to Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool for zlib.  I  
> am just now looking at them, and otherwise have no experience  
> developing with them.  I'd like to think that this would make my life  
> easier in the long run, but I'm not sure.  Are there any opinions on  
> the wisdom and/or difficulty of doing this for zlib?

libpng has recently done this; you might want to check the png-mng-implement
archives over the last two months for details.  There are known issues and
semi-unknown workarounds for some of them; it's probably worth a quick look.

Personally, I detest libtool (and I'm not alone in that); I hate any tool
that hides output files, and libtool loves to stick things in either .lib
or .libs.  I don't have strong feelings about automake; on the one hand,
it bloats out makefiles something fierce, but on the other, it apparently
manages to get most systems' shared-library options and settings correct,
and not just for GCC.  It also has decent support for cross-compilers, I
believe.

I like autoconf, and it's the only one that stands on its own.  automake
depends on it, and I believe libtool depends on both of them.  The original
libpng configure/etc. contributions happened to use all three, and the
maintainer chose to accept them with only minor tweaks, FWIW.

Greg