Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!usc!samsung!emory!rsiatl!meo
From: meo@rsiatl.UUCP (Miles ONeal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: R5 Wish List (Imake to the bitbucket)
Message-ID: <3285@rsiatl.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 90 16:35:52 GMT
Organization: Systems & Software Solutions, Inc.
Lines: 30

jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest) writes:

|If you have never got Imake to work that is your problem, because I
|would expect that almost everyone else has. Imake is indespensible for
|handling different compilers and operating systems - we usually get out
|X source after it has been on a Sun system in the next building, and
|about all you can do with the Makefiles from there is "make Makefiles".
|The difference between their gcc orientated makefiles and our Apollo cc
|ones is considerable. I hope nobody takes this suggestion seriously.

Actually, there are alternatives - I just don't like them as well.

I have written portable, easily-configurable Makefiles in the past-
but to REALLY make life easy, you need certain standard conventions
as to where things are (just like Imake, hmmm), and it helps a LOT
to have standard environment variables and a few shell scripts for
login, setup, etc.

OSF has a "build" environment, which depends even MORE heavily
on file tree layouts, environement variables, and such. It's also
even more "magical" in how it works than imake (although there is
supposed to be doc, now, at last).


Net result - I haven't seen anything freely available that's better
than Imake. Kind of like X - it's not perfect, and sometimes it
drives me up the wall, but it's heads and shoulders above anything else
I've seen.

-Miles