cool. thanks. hope i didn't spoil the ending too much :-)
> Oh, and is there any plan to use autoconf to build under *nix? I
> really like to build in a different directory than the source is in so
> when I send off patches, the source directories aren't cluttered with
> irrelevant object files. I imagine that this will make it harder to
> build under Win32 and MacOS though...
by this i assume you mean putting the object files and etc into
another directory or set of directories rather than under each
source directory -- so that the source tree (that you got from
the tarball or from cvs) remains untouched ??
in the next week or so, i'll be looking into putting together
automated build systems as part of our preparation for releasing
binaries with the 0.7.0 release. i'll try to keep this in mind
as i'm working on that.
as for using autoconf to let us behave like most other packages,
we really haven't needed much of the stuff that it provides. and
there is that Win32, MacOS, BeOS, etc. port to contend with. about
the only system sniffing that we have is the uname hacks in
src/config/abi_defs.
we've had lots of requests for it (2 or 3 this week it seems),
but to date, i'm not yet convinced we need it.
but then again working code has a way of speaking for
itself, so if someone more familiar with autoconf and friends
wanted to take a look at it, i wouldn't mind....
[i've rewritten this paragraph 3 times and i still don't know how
to say this with out sounding condescending or harsh, and this is
definetly not directed at you personally but to the whole list....]
our true goal or the true measure of our success [AbiWord and the
greater Open Source movement in general] is not whether it builds
with "./configure;make;make install" but whether we can get it
installed onto the "Church Secretary's" computer and get the weekly
bulletin printed with it.... yes, a more spiffy makefile would be
cool, but i'm shooting for a bigger form of cool..... :-) :-) :-)
hey, enough preaching. time to hack some more.
thanks again for the patch,
jeff