r16624 - gnucash/trunk - Remove the spurious m4/ directory. Use macros/ instead.

[Andreas Köhler]

Hi,

Am Montag, den 10.12.2007, 18:39 -0500 schrieb Derek Atkins:
> Quoting Andreas Köhler <andi5.py at gmx.net>:
> >> (Actually, CMake might be an interesting alternative, especially 
> >> because we do
> >> not use many "convenience libraries" but instead directly build a 
> >> whole bunch
> >> of shared libraries. I've been using cmake in several other projects for
> >> quite some time by now. But switching the build system from autotools to
> >> cmake this would be a task of the size of one Summer of Code project :-)
> >
> > I just wanted to tell you that I am working on that now, in case anyone
> > started as well :-)
> 
> Quick question..  Does using cmake require cmake to be installed to build
> >from the tarball?  I only ask this because Fedora 7 does not install
> cmake by default, and I suspect that most OSes/Distros do not have cmake
> by default.  Whereas by using the auto-tools, you only need to have
> special software installed if you're trying to build the build system.
> You don't need anything special to build from the tarball.
> 
> If you only need cmake in order to build the build system but you do
> NOT need it to build from the tarball, then that's probably okay.  I
> think it's okay to add dependencies to build from SVN.  But I'd be
> extremely hesitant to require a new build dependency to the tarball.
> 
> Just my $0.02.

Christian will be able to give you a more detailed and knowledgeable
answer, but I think CMake will be necessary to build from the tarball.
I doubt that, by the time of GnuCash 2.4 will be released, major
distributions will lack CMake packages.  I do not use Fedora myself, but
I could find a
fedora/releases/7/Everything/i386/os/Fedora/cmake-2.4.6-3.fc7.i386.rpm
package via browsing.  Even Debian Sarge (Backports) features a 2.4.5
package.  As projects like KDE are switching to CMake, I do not think
that GnuCash will add a unique build dependency that nobody will
maintain in a few years.  I would rather try and see what CMake can help
us with.  BTW, I think this would remove the dependency on libtool.

Yours,
-- andi5