Re: Gripe: working on configure now requires Automake installed locally

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> Tom Lane writes:
>> You seem to be relying on automake's aclocal program to combine the
>> config/*.m4 files into aclocal.m4. I can see no value in introducing
>> this additional package dependency, since as far as I can tell aclocal
>> isn't doing anything for us that 'cat' couldn't do.

> We need it if we ever want to use libtool unless you want to include half
> of libtool into CVS.

Huh? libtool doesn't require automake; I've been using it quite
successfully for libjpeg without any automake.

My impression so far of automake is that it imposes a ton of mechanism
and unpleasant restrictions (like, say, not being able to make INSTALL
an absolute path, as any half-sane person would do) in return for darn
little usefulness. I'm going to want to be convinced that it's a good
idea for Postgres...

regards, tom lane