Eric S Raymond has released version 0.2 of Autodafe, his latest open-source project that provides "tools for freeing your project from the clammy grip of Autotools."

Autodafe works to convert an Autotools build recipe into a bare makefile that "can be read and modified by humans." The Autodafe's README explains:

"This project collects resources for converting an autotools build recipe to a bare makefile that can be read and modified by humans.

...

The principal tool, makemake, reduces a generated Makefile to an equivalent form suitable for human modification and with internal automake cruft removed. It is intended to be used with ifdex(1) to enable severing a project from its autotools build recipe, leaving a bare Makefile in place. A HOWTO describing a conversion workflow for an entire project is included.

One other tool is planned but not yet implemented."

Those wishing to learn more about ESR's Autodafe project can do so via [1]GitLab .

ESR additionally added on [2]Twitter/X :

"Release 0.2 of my autotools killer. It's ready for use on projects buiilding binaries or static libraries. Shared libraries is a more difficult problem and will gate the 1.0 release."

This is one way to work away from Autotools for those not wishing to join the Meson bandwagon or going to another build system outright.



[1] https://gitlab.com/esr/autodafe

[2] https://twitter.com/esrtweet/status/1780373932555526286