On: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar (2012)

[astrange]

Here's an autoconf-compatible and much, much shorter configure system that isn't expanded from macros and remembers that bash has functions. Look, you can actually maintain it!

http://git.libav.org/?p=libav.git;a=blob;f=configure;h=9f836...

http://git.libav.org/?p=libav.git;a=blob;f=Makefile;h=4e026b...

The new thing seems to be generating configure from CMake which requires you to get a Ph.D to figure out how to override $CC.

[mcguire → astrange]

Is that a 5400 line shell script?

    echo "This configure script requires a POSIX-compatible shell"
    echo "such as bash or ksh."
    echo "THIS IS NOT A BUG IN LIBAV, DO NOT REPORT IT AS SUCH."

That's always a good sign.

[astrange → mcguire]

To compare with php (nearest autoconf I've got on hand):

    # wc -l ac* configure.in configure
        3033 acinclude.m4
        9398 aclocal.m4
        1682 configure.in
      117433 configure
      131546 total

Most of libav's configure script is dependency trees for all the codecs flags you can turn on/off, so it's quite compact without it. x264 reuses it at 1500 lines:

http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=blob;f=configure;h=9d1...

Apparently the bash requirement isn't too bad since it works on Windows and Plan 9.