[PD-dev] Re: externals/build SConscript

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Tim Blechmann hat gesagt: // Tim Blechmann wrote:

> imo, someone should look into it and write a platform independent
> scons Builder then we wouldn't have this nasty discussion any more.

Trying to get the discussion back from nasty and on to some more
technical stuff: Without any offence intended I don't think the
traditional build system was working perfecly well, and in some
regards it ways really hitting at walls. It is great for what it tried
to be great at, that is, building single externals, which are not
using (many) libraries and which are written in C. It has problems
with externals using several source files or externals written in C++
in certain areas.

Others (carmen etc.) also thought the "build" was limited and as
action speaks louder, they just made a new one without breaking the
old one. That's fine. (Btw: There also is the flext-buildsys, a third
try to get over all the difficulties with building stuff for different
platforms.)

We could discuss (again) if libraries are good or bad, however even
scons tries to build as much as possible as single externals (e.g. it
builds Zexy that way).  Scons however makes it easier to also get
libraries into the build and as Tim noted it also can be used to build
C++/flext externals like PDContainer or pool. 

What I think is impressive about scons, is that it doesn't require
that much work to get new externals into the build system. It is not
strictly necessary to #include-link files into "build", instead also a 
"SConscript" in (selected) source directories can be used. 

I don't like at all, that the main SConscript deletes stuff from build
locally and that it does so using platform dependent sh instructions.
That's not the way a build system in CVS should work. Maybe it would
be possible to find a cleaner solution to conflicting externals. 

Also the way it is set up should be better documented than just
"scons; scons install". Things like how to set an install prefix
should be explained as well as how to add new externals to the scons
build. This is an area, where the traditional build is much better.

However I do think, that scons could actually be the more flexible
solution to get all the different build preferences of every developer
together. So I'd like it if we could discuss this openly.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__