Die GNU autotools

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 12:22:21AM +0200, Elazar Leibovich wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il>wrote:
> 
> > > 1) Just use std::map, and ignore the performance penalty, no one will
> > > probably notice.
> >
> > People do notice. This does not work in real life (in too many cases).
> >
> 
> I really think that in most cases CPU is not the bottleneck, but of course
> it can be false for a specific application. This is not the main point here.
> 
> 
> >
> > > 2) Copy an efficient map implementation from somewhere (as in
> > copy-paste),
> > > eg strinx.sf.net, and use it.
> >
> > This leads you to having duplicated useless code in your tree.
> >
> 
> Again, from a purity POV this is bad, since you could add this duplicated
> code as a library and it would be more sound. However from practical POV,
> it'll work, it's reduce dependencies of the project, it makes it more
> portable, and it's good enough.
> 
> 
> >
> > > 3) Have a project in a separate directory which implements an efficient
> > map
> > > in a siusing existing map implementation. For this project, it makes
> > sense
> > > to use autotools. But this project will provide a solid testable
> > interface
> > > (ie .hpp file) for this map.
> >
> > So how can I pass parameters to the configure script?
> >
> 
> You don't. That's the whole point. In 99.9% of the cases, you don't want to
> pass parameters to the configure script. A portable efficient std::map
> implementation is an example where you should design your program so that no
> parameters would be needed. the autosuite will figure out which platform are
> you in, and will compile the appropriate files for this platform. But your
> main logic wouldn't need the autosuite at all, the main logic of your code
> would only depend on the portability layer.

But it's a system (or user-installed) library. Why would I need to bundle
it with my code?

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