[PD-dev] maintenance of builds for deken

[Roman Haefeli]

Hey all

I compiled some externals for several platforms to be used with Deken.
Now, I'm thinking about stream-lining the process and I stumble across
some culprits and I still have lots of questions.

Here the list of externals / libraries I'm interested in maintaining
builds:

iemnet
osc (mrpeach)
slipdec / slipenc (mrpeach)
ggee
zexy
readdir (moocow) 

The platforms I intend to support: 
Linux-i386
Linux-amd64
Linux-armv6
Windows-i386

(I'd love to support OS X, but have little knowledge and no access to an
OS X machine).

Currently, the different libraries use different build tools. Many use
the template Makefile, some others like readdir come with their own
autotools setup (which uses ancient defaults, btw). Slipdec/slipenc
don't have any Makefile at all (probably they're meant to be part of
mrpeach library)  but compile fine with the template Makefile.

Also, there is Katja's new standard Makefile available, which is
obviously actively maintained and thus I'd prefer to use that instead of
the template Makefile in svn. 

Now, before I dig too deep into stuff, I'd like to hear some opinions
from pd-dev. First, how feel people about me maintaining builds of their
source code? It seems for most externals no one maintains builds, that
is why I'd like to do it. Zexy already is available in Deken, but shows
up with weird, non-standard names. I don't need to maintain zexy
separately, if you - IOhannes - have intentions to do that yourself.

Also, there is the old rule, that devs only commit to their own folder
in svn. Now, some parts haven't been touched for years and it seems
cumbersome for everyone involved to make requests to the original author
to apply certain changes.  Should I commit my changes (build system
stuff) directly to svn (i.e. by ignoring that rule)? Or would it be
better, we move the maintained stuff out of svn and host them as git
repository under the pure-data umbrella on github.com? Or am I better of
with just doing my stuff privately (as I did for now)?

I don't want anyone to think I plan to take over "their stuff". I
happily continue if no one minds, but if the authors of the listed
libraries prefer to maintain builds themselves, please just say so.

Roman