autoconf, automake and friends

Thu Mar 1 13:24:00 GMT 2001

On 2001年2月28日, Olivier wrote:
> PS: should I persevere with auto friends? It does not seem to
> help much for java.

I'd been wondering the same, actually. Almost nobody uses autoconf etc.
for pure java projects. Of course they are important for anything in GNU.
Even traditional makefiles are not always best for java. They are
typically optimized for maintenance, not build time. Sun's java is most
efficient compiling entire packages at a time. Similarly, gcj can now
compile many java sources to one .o file, yielding faster builds and
(potentially) better code. Makefiles won't leverage this capability
without extra effort.
On a related subject: now that gcj is in wider use I wonder if it would
be appropriate to add some built-in implicit rules to GNU make so
that usage like "make Hello.class" will just work.
Jeff