Kaffe don't link on HP/UX 10.20

[Godmar Back]

 Petter, Alexandre,

upfront, I need to admit that I am not familiar with automake or libtool.
I do not doubt that these are useful tools in general, but I have some
concerns about whether using them in Kaffe will provide more overall benefit 
than it might cause hassle.  I am open to arguments, though, and you can 
prove me wrong.

So let me ask a few questions:

* Who will need to have these tools installed?

    - Will Kaffe users who compile Kaffe out of the box need them?
    - Will Kaffe developers who make changes to Kaffe's .c/.h files need?
    - Will Kaffe developers who make changes to Kaffe's .in files need them?
    - Will those who'll "need" them also have to "learn" them?
 
* In general, I believe there is virtue in assuming as little as possible
  about what users or developers have available to them.  Look at the
  gcc dependencies we already have;  look at how fragile the Makefiles
  are.  Trailing slashes, include directives, are you using gmake, FreeBSD
  make, Sun make, Solaris make?  What is happening when it says 
  "don't know how to make XXX", etc.  Don't get me wrong: none of these
  are insurmountable problems, but they all require time and consideration.
  I feel we shouldn't invite them unless we have to.

* What will the benefit of libtool be?  To find the proper link-order and
  switches for a given architecture?  How often will those change?

* How intuitive are these tools?  Rank them against autoconf (a tool I 
  personally find extremely unintuitive.)  I assume automake generates 
  Makefiles, or Makefile.ins?  How readable and debuggable are those?
  Will we be spending our time debugging problems in the various input
  specifications used by those tools?

* How big is the version dependency of these tools?  The background of
  this question is:  will all developers have to always have the latest version
  of the tool installed on their machine?  Take CVS as an example:
  it is amazing how many features change between such versions as 1.5,
  1.8, 1.9.10, or 1.9.26.  (Tim wasn't able to find out how to set CVS-readonly 
  access to his CVS server in the version he originally had, even with the
  help of people who gave him detailed instructions.  Upgrading his server
  fixed this.)

	- Godmar