It's quite simple, really. The "old style" build system uses the bundled dynamic_module_makefile and friends, which is the way that modules are built when compiling Pike. They include a large number of support targets and utilities that simply aren't present when writing a "new style" module. The external module distribution system relies on that support framework (and the consistency of the behavior it provides).
I'm not suggesting that "new style" modules aren't simpler to create. But, I also don't think that "old style" modules are really any more difficult if you have a stub module to work from. Indeed, if I had to start from an empty module directory, I'd probably think that new style modules were harder.
I also don't see why an "old style" module should build any less reliably than a new style one. The only problems I've ever had were either due to a developer breaking the build system (happens at least once each development cycle, due to the fact that external building is the last thing on anyone's mind at the time) or because there's a stale set of files on disk.
Just my 2 cents.
Bill
On Wed, 10 Jun 2009, Martin Baehr wrote:
i get what you are saying, i am just confused why bill seems to claim that 'new style' modules can not be distributed at all...
i can understand things depending on the state of the system while building, but as you say that is the same for both styles. (and not really a problem for packaging modules for linux distributions since the state of the system is in the distributors control for the most part.)
greetings, martin.