Re: top-level make file?

[Tom Tromey <tromey creche cygnus com>]

Russ> It seems that some of the packages need to be compiled and
Russ> installed before other packages can be compiled.  Isn't that a
Russ> job for a Makefile?

Yeah.  Here at Cygnus we have all our source in a single tree.  You
can either check out parts of the tree (e.g., gdb and the stuff it
needs), or check out everything.

There is a top-level configure script (hand-written; it predates
autoconf) and Makefile which can be used to configure and build
everything.

If you look at a net release of gdb or binutils you can see this in
action.  These are just snapshots of different subsets of our tree --
locally I could check out gdb+binutils+gcc+whatever else and build it
all with two commands ("configure; make").


We could probably do something like this.  The only complication is
that you want libraries to be found either in the build tree or the
install tree; this requires some nasty configure hacking.


If somebody wants to do this, I could probably explain what needs to
be done in more detail.  I'm not particularly motivated to do it
myself.


Russ> And, it would be nice if I could completely compile all the
Russ> gnome code without having to become root.

Which parts needs root access to compile?  That seems bad.

Installation is a different matter, of course.

Russ> And moreover, it would be nice if I could completely compile all
Russ> the gnome code without having to overwrite my current gnome
Russ> installation.

I don't understand.  If you mean the requirement to "make install"
some pieces before other pieces will compile, then this would probably
have to be addressed by a "master configure" scheme anyway.

Tom