On Sat, 2007-11-10 at 11:44 +0100, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
> Totally wrong. I dare you build anything with a barebones linux
> install with only a shell and make. You need:
>
> * A C compiler
> * Tons and tones of -dev packages
> * If you want to compile a fresh SVN/CVS checkout you need
> libtool/intltool/*tool/auto*/m4/<blah-di-blah>
>
> If I create an absolutely minimal installation and do "apt-get
> build-dep nautilus" how many development related packages would I end
> up with? 100? More?
Rob's point was regarding building from tarballs, not svn. Yes, if you
build from svn you need the tools to rebuild the build environment. But
if you build from a tarball, obviously you need the dependencies (glib,
etc), but apart from that you need a compiler and shell. No Python, no
Perl, no random build tools which are not even packaged in major
distributions.
Poky (an OpenEmbedded derivative) builds packages from scratch in a
clean environment, so I have two reasons to like autotools:
1) minimal dependencies. No need to build Python and so on to actually
get started. We do rebuild autotools because some older versions of
autoconf and so on don't know about certain architectures, but now days
this could probably go the Debian route and just replace
config.{guess,sub}.
2) it cross-compiles with no pain. Configure scripts know what tests
need to be performed on the host, and what need to be performed on the
target. If a configure scripts wants to check that a file exists on the
target, it will refuse when cross-compiling because it clearly can't
tell. There is a cache of known information which is populated with
test results such as this, so even complicated configure scripts like
glib and dbus which probe the target system heavily work without any
modifications.
I can live with adding another tool (hell, I'm going to have to live
with building Qt4 just to get qmake), but if a new build tool doesn't
cross-compile easily you can expect GNOME Mobile to die a sudden death.
Has anyone tested waf or the other new tools with a cross-build
environment?
Ross
--
Ross Burton mail: ross burtonini com
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