Re: gnome build tool

[atmczen ibm net]

Hi Havoc, nice to hear from you:-

On Tue, 13 Apr 1999 16:39:53 -0400 (EDT)
Havoc Pennington <rhp@zirx.pair.com> wrote:

> If I can suggest a small, short-term fix that would make a big
> difference:
> failure to find libraries or the correct version of them often just
> warns (AC_MSG_WARNING) when it should abort (AC_MSG_ERROR). Thus the
> build fails mysteriously some time later.
I agree with you there.  Users understand the error message that he
has to 'install libfoo package and reconfigure', lot better than
'undefined reference to func_foo'.  So maybe a little helper script
to scan all configure.in's and replace AC_MSG_WARNING with
AC_MSG_ERROR.

If I remember, imlib configures, complies and installs without error
even if you do not have libpng, libtiff, etc.  It just warns that the
support library for those formats will not be build.  Users would not
even notice this if they are not redirecting the configure output to
a file for a later inspection (and I bet most users don't).

>From the imlib perspective, this is the correct behavior, because not
all imlib users need png support.  Same thing with ImageMagick. The
same helper script will take care of these problems as well.

> We could really use more "buildmeisters." There was someone else on
> gnome-list volunteering to work on this
Yep, Mr. Walthinsen is whom you are talking about.  I am really
interested in seeing what he has.

> I'll let the build experts comment on the details of your
> proposal.:-)
The reason I posted my original message only in the devel list was
that I do not want developers to feel obliged to re-shuffle their
priority because of my posting, so I wanted to hear what they think
first.  Now that I think about this again, there are enough hackers
in the gnome (general) list (Mr. Walthinsen for sure is one) to
implement this, without putting any burden on the developers.  So
feel free to cross-post my original message to the gnome list.

Zen

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