Re: Perl scripts to build GNOME

["Brandon S. Allbery" <allbery ece cmu edu>]

+----- From: intinig@tin.it
| >I make no promises about the attached; it's big, it's ugly, I *think* the
| >dependencies are mostly right. 
| 
| We've taken a different approach to the problem... my script is much more of a
| program which asks a couple of questions to the user, so he can choose what he
| wants to compile, and he can also add new modules to the process via a text
| file.
+--->8

Well, mine originally was someone else's simple script to rebuild GNOME
that was sent to this list.  I started thinking in terms of intelligent
rebuilding, and that then began to evolve into a more general tool (you'll
note a few comments about "metamake" in there :-)  It could be "done" with
a Makefile, but make isn't designed to look inside independent packages
and determine dependencies and such --- as a Makefile it would have to have
quite a bit of knowledge about each package to work, whereas the Perl script
can use some simple (but not very make-friendly) heuristics.

My in-development version inspects the packages to see how they expect to
be configured, so it can adapt to the autoconf'ed parts, the standard Perl
module stuff for gnome-perl, the Imake configuration for fvwm2, etc.  It
has some intelligence to try to determine whether it can use an autogen.sh
or do the configuration manually, as well.  Then again, part of the idea
behind my script is that I'll be able to apply it to /afs/ece.cmu.edu/support
once I have it working --- it will be a lifesaver there (coping with adding
a new architecture to that mess is part of why I was in a bad mood earlier
today, the rest of the reason being a whatsit in DSSC who couldn't believe
that his unsupported Linux box had been hacked....  I'm feeling much better
now.  *sigh*)

-- 
brandon s. allbery	[os/2][linux][solaris][japh]	 allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator	     [WAY too many hats]	   allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering
carnegie mellon university			   (bsa@kf8nh is still valid.)