I had a teeny pet project using GNU assembly that was going to target two platforms.

Instead of keeping my handwritten worst-practices Makefile I decided to try GNU Autotools for the educated reasons of:

  • Text scrolling by looks pretty
  • Vague memories of ./configure make make install tarballs

I got hit with mysterious macro errors, recompile with -fPIE errors (didn’t need this before?), autotools trying to run gcc on a .o file w/ the same options as an .s file, “no rule for all:”, and other things a noob would run into. (I don’t need a bugfix, since my handspun Makefile is “working on my machine” with uname -m.) So there’s a bit of a learning curve here, inhibited by old documentation and more quietly, genAI being shittier than normal in this department

With this I ask:

Do people still use Autotools for non-legacy stuff? If not, what do people choose for a new project’s build system and why?

edit: trimmed an aside

  • algernon
    151·
    2 days ago

    Meson and CMake are the two major players I’ve seen along autotools. Are they better? In some respects, yes (especially Meson, imo), in others… not really. For a pet project that only targets two platforms, I’d just stick to handwritten worst-practices Makefile. You will likely have less trouble with that than any of the others, simply because you know it already.

    • fool@programming.devOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      Yeah I was considering using one of these two, out of curiosity.

      I’ve heard complaints about CMake… on pre-2015 forums, so I don’t know where it’s at now.

      I’ve done very little from the developer side of Meson but I do recall having tried a sound theme that, inexplicably, had a Meson-based installer. (It was just .ogg files iirc.) That’s probably a good sign if someone picked it over an install.sh

      Though you’re right, there’s probably little advantage in me not using a Makefile here, except again, curiosity