a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy

[Antonio Olivares]

> Of course such a long message had to leave something out :-(
> 
> On Jul 25, 2008, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > These pieces were thus developed within this
> environment that combined
> > GNU software and Linux.  Just like Linux itself, these
> other pieces
> > were created dependent on GNU infrastructure, and only
> recently did it
> > become possible to use Linux with other low-level
> libraries instead of
> > GNU libc.  That said, even distributions that adopt
> such alternate
> > libraries still include a significant number of GNU
> components to make
> > for a complete functional system.
> 
> And then, there's autotools.  In order to get rid of
> all GNU software,
> one must also refrain from using GNU autoconf-generated
> configure
> scripts and configure-generated Makefiles and header files;
> GNU
> automake-generated Makefile templates, and GNU libtool
> scripts.
> Replacements for these tools would probably have to be
> written,
> because converting all the auto-configuration and building
> machinery
> encoded in configure.ac and Makefile.am would be an insane
> amount of
> work.
> 
> *That* would be really fun to watch :-)

One exists and it works in more platforms.  Sorry Alexandre, but that is the way it is.  

http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/smake.html

It is highly portable and I have used it.  Jorg Schilling does not mind as well.  Here is something that he says that his program does that the GNU equivalent does not 

makefiles is best used with smake for convenience and easier debugging 
because gnu make does not run on all platforms smake does and 
because gnu make does not allow to do Makefile debugging 
 
I know that a bunch of people do not like Mr. Schilling, but you cannot deny the work he has done as well.  We cannot deny the work that GNU has done, and like I have said before we thank them enormously for their hard work.  But to say that without them, there is no automake tools.  This is proof that such a tool exists and it has some things that the GNU one does not.

Regards,

Antonio