Re: CHECK_STRUCTS/dmpstruct.h mechanism is broken.

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Achim Gratz wrote:
> Another consideration for Emacs specifically would be how much extra
> baggage we can afford to pack and still support all the systems that we
> do now.

Sure, but that is a reason to prefer Emacs as a candidate for switching from 
Autoconf/Automake to GNU Make. Unlike most other major GNU packages, Emacs 
already assumes GNU Make, so the switch won't introduce a dependency. Also, 
Emacs (unlike most other GNU packages) already avoids Automake and this has 
already prompted Gnulib to support packages that don't use Automake. I'm merely 
thinking of another step in this process, where Gnulib adds support for packages 
that don't use Autoconf either. Since Gnulib currently provides 2/3 of the code 
that goes into 'configure', this would be a good step toward moving Emacs away 
from Autoconf.

Note that I'm not proposing to move away from the Autoconf Way of testing 
features rather than guessing them. I'm merely proposing a way to do that within 
the framework of GNU Make (which is parallelized) instead of m4+sh (which is not).

> I still think that incrementally
> improving autoconf is more likely to successfully (and quickly) move
> things forward than trying to outright re-implement it.

As a veteran of Autoconf I disagree, but the only way to resolve this is to see 
what happens. Parallelizing Autoconf is a much bigger project than transitioning 
GNU Emacs away from Autoconf, and nobody has seriously proposed attempting it. I 
think transitioning GNU Emacs is doable but to be honest the initial reactions 
here have not been encouraging and so my enthusiasm for the idea is lagging (for 
non-technical reasons, not for technical ones).