Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of the OSI (Open Source Initiative) organization and a pioneer of the open-source movement, has published the Autodafe toolkit. This toolkit allows the conversion of build instructions and scripts used by Autotools utilities into a single standard Makefile that can be easily read and modified by developers. The project code is written in Python and is distributed under the BSD license.
The toolkit includes the makemake program, which converts the build file generated by the automake utility into an equivalent human-readable Makefile that is easy to edit and removes the inner workings of automake. Additionally, the use of the ifdex utility allows for the complete removal of Autotools from the project, replacing it with a standard Makefile workflow.
The motivation for creating the Autodafe project stemmed from a desire to return to the use of standard Makefiles instead of the overly complicated Autotools scripts, which arose after the incident involving a backdoor in the xz package. The advantages of this approach include simplified build rules, which will be easier to verify and harder to embed hidden functionality. However, the downsides include the loss of support for older Unix systems, increased dependence on libtool, and reduced flexibility in configuration.
Source: opennet.ru
