Re: build systems

["Alberto Ruiz" <aruiz gnome org>]

2007/11/9, daniel g. siegel <dgsiegel gmail com>:

hello!

toc2 instead
============
toc2 instead was really nice, i can edit most of it using bash or
makefiles. its fast as hell and does what i want:
      * fast: it doesnt open a shell for each executed command, which
        allows to be very fast
      * lives in the src-dir
      * use whatever language you want to enhance it, in my case bash
        and makefiles
      * maintaineance is very easy
      * custom things:
      ./configure --maintainer
        enables the maintainer mode, which just sets the paths to the
        glade or ui-files correctly, in order to allow an execution in
        the src-dir.
      make dist
        just a normal "make dist", but mine prints the md5sum of the
        package so that i just have to copy it

i made my decision based on that, even though i got _many_ lets say nice
or not so nice messages about that. after about 4 months i am still
satisfied with my decision.

though my biggest concern about toc2 at the moment is translation
handling, which is not supported by itself and therefore has to be done
manually with xgettext and msgmerge.

so richard hughes and ali sabil told me about waf
(http://code.google.com/p/waf/) as a build system replace for toc2,
which would support translations nicely. has anyone used this tool?



please understand, i dont want to bring up a "autotools is bad and it
should die"-thread, i just want to use my time to code and not to use
that time and effort on a build system. i also know, that i have stabbed
into a beehive, so please be kind lets keep this discussion objective
and realistic.


thanks a lot for reading the whole mail till here and not pressing the
"reply flame"-button immidiately ;)

daniel

First, I'm glad you hate autotools, I would add more reasons to that list, but I think that we all get the picture already. 

I don't really get what you really want to discuss here, but I'll give you my opinion anyway.

toc2 is just not an option since it depends on GNU Bash and GNU Make, this is a stopper for non Linux environments, waf only depends on python2.3 or greater, which is present by default on most systems (except Windows). I've been trying it and seems pretty promising and easy to extend.

However, proposing a replacement for all gnome modules seems a bit scary to me, since we may end up breaking things for a lot of people. I would do something else instead:

* Take waf, and implement a first script set for glib or gtk+, make sure you provide exactly the same --with/--enable options with the same presets, and that people get exactly the same results as autotools do, and ask people to test it in different platforms. (I volunteer myself to test it on Solaris and Mac OS X), I can't think on why  would anyone stop you to do this since you don't even need to break the current 
configure.ac/Makefile.am stuff to add it.
 
*  Get all that feedback, spot possible problems on waf, fix them, and only then we would be able to do a serious discuss over such a proposal, otherwise, this would be like arguing about angels' sex. 

-- 
Un saludo,
Alberto Ruiz