Re: build systems

[Rob Taylor <rob taylor codethink co uk>]

Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-11-09 at 15:40 +0100, Dave Neary wrote:
>> That said, there is one concern which trumps all others when choosing
>> a
>> build system: how easy is it for someone with a plain vanilla
>> distribution to compile & install your software? ./configure && make
>> &&
>> make install is about as hard as it can be. any harder, and your
>> barrier
>> to entry is too high. That includes "cd build; cmake ..; make; make
>> install;" (at least until it becomes ubiquitous). How does toc2 fare
>> on
>> this level? autoconf/automake are hard for the software developer,
>> because the goal is to make it easy for the software builder. The
>> trade-off pays off in community size, testers, developers and
>> translators down the line.
> 
> And in that casse, the requirement for autotools based is very low: only
> shell and the compiler + dependencies for said program (no need for the
> autotools if you just want to build). While for CMake based build, you
> need CMake to be installed first.

<snip>

I don't have much to add to this thread (I like autotools, but its like
git or vim/emacs - love only after much pain..) But the low dependency
of autotool's generated output is very important, and a lot of the
reason that it looks the way it looks. To build a package that's using
autotools all you need is any bourne(ish) shell and any flavour of make.

As someone who does quite a bit of embedded development, I'd like to see
any possible replacement be able to generate releases which can be built
with similarly low requirements.

In terms of helping beginners, we actually seem to do a pretty good job
- I just googled 'gnome automake help' and hit 'Writing GNOME
Applications'[1] which does a wonderful job of explaining it all and
guides you in writing nice small maintainable autofoo.

One problem I find rather endemic in gnome is a) 'forced' usage of older
automake/autoconf versions (why AM 1.7? why?!) and a lot of very
confusing and messy autotools usage (I'll make a list if people want..).
Maybe it'd be better for us to spend time cleaning up our autotools
usage to be more understandable than switching to something else that's
less capable.

Thanks,
Rob

[1] http://developer.gnome.org/doc/books/WGA/index.html

> 
> 
> Hub
> 
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-- 
Rob Taylor, Codethink Ltd. -  http://codethink.co.uk