Re: Extending automake with a new language

On Sat, Sep 6, 2025 at 4:30=E2=80=AFPM Karl Berry <[email protected]> wr=
ote:
>
> In addition to the various ideas already discussed, I wanted to mention:
>
>     alternative ideas as to how autoconf/automake should behave with
>     regards to GNU Guile.
>
> If anyone can write changes for Automake so that Guile is another
> supported first-class language like C and Python, that would be great.
> It's not something I'll be able to pursue.

Yes, I'm interested in this and I should be able to undertake the task
once a census has been reached. First I'm writing a bunch of example
projects (each shown in two versions: flat and recursive make;
libraries include test suites with `make check` and all projects come
with texinfo documentation manuals):

- apple     :: A pure GNU Guile library.
- orange    :: Two pure GNU Guile applications.
- blueberry :: A pure GNU Guile application with two GNU Guile libraries.
- banana    :: A GNU Guile library with a C library dependency.
- kiwi      :: A GNU Guile library together with a C library.
- lemon     :: A C library with a GNU Guile dependency.

(The fruits are the names of the example projects.) My intention is to
then present these examples to the Guile mailing list to get a
discussion going about some good practices. These examples cover most
use cases and there's no reason why anyone should spend more than a
few minutes tinkering with the build system for such simple projects.
Maybe at that point we can take a step back and consider "What should
the configure and makefile files ideally look like?"

Regards,
Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou