Re: autotools and ada

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

"Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam@spam.com> writes:

> Ottavio Campana wrote:
>> I'm trying to develop a program using autotools to manage the
>> makefiles.
>
> My experience, in over 21 yrs using Ada, is that make files are
> unnecessary. I have never used them.

Amazing :).

Here are some of the things I use Makefiles for, that the various
Ada-specific tools don't do:

running unit tests automatically

creating zip files for archiving or installation

running compilers for languages other than Ada (LaTeX, VHDL). These
tools are essential to the core Ada project.

I gather you work on simpler (Ada-only) projects, and have a different
mechanism for running unit tests?

Hmm. I guess you could use shell scripts. But I find make's ability
to perform only the minimally required operations enhances
productivity enormously compared to shell scripts.

-- 
-- Stephe