[omniORB] configure an omniORB

[Kevin Bailey]

Sai-Lai Lo wrote:

> Can I use autoconf native on NT or OpenVMS or other non-unix
> like platforms? No.

As far as I know, only 'configure' needs to run on the target
platforms which only requires /bin/sh. 'autoconf' only runs on
the platform of your choice.

For platforms which don't have /bin/sh and the assorted text
utilities that 'configure' uses, you just keep doing what you're
doing (pre-configured Makefiles.)

It must mean something that Python and GNU make made it onto
these platforms.

> What do I gain by using autoconf?

Well, one thing that would be nice to have is the ability to
make omniORB for 2 platforms from the same source tree. With
autoconf based packages, I can do something like this:

mkdir platform1
mkdir platform2
cd platform1
../../path_to_omniORB/configure --target=platform1
make
cd ../platform2
../../path_to_omniORB/configure --target=platform2
make

> Is it really too much to do to read the README file and
> uncomment 2 lines in 2 files, as it is now required to build
> omniORB?

With all the respect due a package as well done as omniORB is,
getting omniORB compiled required a lot more than a couple
changes. Non-standard locations for python and gcc were just a
couple of my problems. autoconf automatically handles this kind
of thing too.

I don't know how difficult it is to maintain autoconf files but
there seems to be lots of volunteer projects which use it so it
can't be that bad. However, it would appear that if its going
to happen, it will at least require an autoconf expert to get
the ball rolling.