[PD-dev] pd buildsys: libdir / etags and the existing template

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

Hey dmotd,

I'm cc'ing pd-dev, hope that's ok.  That's the best place for  
discussions on this topic, IMHO.

On Sep 13, 2009, at 5:14 AM, dmotd wrote:

> hi hans,
>
> so i'm trying to finalize the template for the
> (improved) buildsys, i've attempted to keep the
> same function calls that are present in the
> current template but i have a few questions.

excellent :D

> is the libdir metafile generator script still in
> use, because its no longer present in ext13
> template? are there other meta data / data mining
> functions that may be useful in the future?

The script can still be used, but now the idea is for them to manually  
generated and maintained, then checked into SVN.

> i'm not familiar with etags, i understand that
> they allow emacs to to search through relevant
> code, am i off the mark and is just globbing
> source code enough?

yes, its not just emacs, I think many other editors use them too.   
'etags' is my name for it, I suppose there is a more proper name for  
the target.

> dist seems useful, should there be an install
> directive too, and perhaps some meta data with the
> relevant environment vars which the lib was built.
>
> obviously this template needs to be twisted a
> little for existing libs, but i was also thinking
> that there should be some extra vars for
> additional cflags / ldflags / etc.. as it seems
> a little too simplistic in its current state?

I wouldn't add anything that there isn't a direct use case for, what  
do you have in mind? The idea is to keep it as simple as possible so  
its easy to understand.  People rarely spend time thinking about build  
systems, so its good to have them as simple as possible.  Then if  
people want to have more complicated ones, they can add things.  For  
example, once we get a Makefile template, then I think it would be  
good to have a configure.in/Makefile.in template for more complicated  
build needs.

> in addition, as the buildsys i'm writing is
> non-recursive, so the top level builder knows a
> lot more about the externals tree than previously.
> there is potential to gather information during
> the build process, if you have any ideas please
> let me know.

'make' and autotools build systems should be recursive, that is how  
'make' is supposed to work.  It has the big advantage of being more  
modular, i.e. a library's Makefile easily can work standalone or part  
of a bigger whole.

> i will contact you in the near future about
> putting my buildsys on the autobuild farm to test
> what works and not. unfortunately i can't work on
> this stuff except in my free time so i'm sorry if
> developments are painfully slow.


No worries, glad to see any progress :).

.hc


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