From: teunis <teunis@computersupportcentre.com>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 09:38:00 -0700 (MST)

Re: libggi not working ... (GNU stuff/complaints/answers)

On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Sven wrote:

> > Easy - libGGI isn't just supposed to compile on GNU!
> 
> that is just plain uninformed ...

Prolly true...  But I've encountered -many- GNU-related programs that
require most/all GNU utilities installed.  If that's not the case for
autoconf/automake, cool :]

> autoconf/automake produce a ./configure script that is a shell script. tell me wich plateform  don't support sh ?

Windows95, Windows98, Windows NT.  Need I say more?

> i think there is only M$win, and even there there is bash and other shells (even native shells  under NT i think, since it is part of posix compliance.)

*sigh*.  This backs up my point about needing strange utilities...  Of
course you need strange utilities (like "GNU make") currently as well so
that's no prob.   (Windows NT has a cobbled-together barely-operational "sh"
equiv AFAIK.  But I've never found it on my NT install when I had it...)

> so you would only need GNU autoconf/automake to build the released source and then everyone can just type ./configure && make && make install.
> 
> > None of these platforms support GNU's autoconf utilities.... (unless you
> install them....  and that's kind of irritating.. and makes for -big-
> downloads when libGGI is so small)
> 
> automake is 300KB and autoconf is 400KB.

Ah... I thought those needed GNU C... [ad nauseum]
700K is irritating but liveable.

> i think this is important, if you ever want klibggi to become widely accepted, how much people have i heard that say free software are such a pain to configure.
>
> and to you thuink you need autoconf and automake to compile gcc to compile autoconf ?

Actually I did think so, yes.  As I have -always- had GNU stuffy on my Linux
box I never knew better.  (and I've only recently gotten into Visual C++.. A
long time ago I used to program with Watcom C++ and Borland C++ and in those
days autoconf/.. didn't exist - and for the most part neither did any
dos/windows version of any GNU utils beyond some shell-script utils.  This
was before DJGPP appeared....)

and GNU has never made it any easier to find out.  Their documentation?
what documentation?

G'day, eh? :)
	- Teunis

PS: If it's required, post on the website (and in a README.autoconf
somewhere) that autoconf/automake is required as well as any other
software...  (ie: GNU make, bash, (perl? :), ...)
Incidentally, having perl as a requirement is not so bad... lotsa people
use it and the micro$oft OS-wannabe's have perl as well...