[cfe-dev] is configure+make dead yet?

[James K. Lowden]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 15:52:08 -0400
Bill Hoffman <bill.hoffman at kitware.com> wrote:

> On 6/26/2012 3:26 PM, James K. Lowden wrote:
> > I have company.  Users of autoconf outnumber those of Cmake by 10:1
> > if not 1000:1.
> I don't think this is true anymore.

Of the 14,316 pkgsrc projects in the current tree, 3,286 use GNU
autoconf.  120 use Cmake:

$ ls -d  */* | wc -l
   14316
$ find . -name Makefile -exec grep -lE 'GNU_CONFIGURE=.*yes$' {} + \
	| wc -l
     3286
$ find . -name Makefile -exec grep -lE 'USE_CMAKE=.*yes$' {} + \
	| wc -l
     120

That's just projects, not project-years.  Autoconf for over 10 years
was the game in town. There hardly exists a developer who's compiled a
project and hasn't dealt with it.  Maybe it's not the greatest tool,
maybe it will eventually be displaced by something better.  But the
installed base and accumulated experience cannot be dismissed.  

--jkl