Re: build systems

[Michael Banck <mbanck debian org>]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2007 at 11:24:36AM +0100, Emmanuel Fleury wrote:
> Richard Hughes wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-11-10 at 00:32 +0100, Olav Vitters wrote:
> >> In this case there is an easy solution. Convert a few GNOME projects
> >> to the new build system and show the result.
> > 
> > Good plan. I've got an old branch of gnome-power-manager building with
> > waf, and I indend on having waf a build method for PackageKit in the
> > next few days. Is there any hard and fast rule that says gnome projects
> > _have_ to use autotools?
> 
> There is an extra dependency that nobody did evoke during this thread.
> In Debian, the Common Debian  Build-System
> (http://build-common.alioth.debian.org/) provides some facilities to
> integrate modules based on autotools. I guess, it would be handy if you
> could also come with the same facilities to build packages using this
> scheme.

That's harsh - CDBS is best known for it's off-putting internal
implementation ("Why do I have to look at hundreds of lines of Makefile
code to debug my package build?"), something which seems to be one of
the top-cited hate reasons for automake as well.

Anyway, if somebody converts some project to a new build system to show
its superiority over autotools, I suggest to include a library (and
maybe python) package in there as well - while it seems to be pretty
easy to just get simple programs run with those new fashioned build
systems, getting a library properly built with scons was something
non-obvious the last time I saw it mentioned, for example.


Michael