Compiling externals was [Re: [PD] ordered numbers]

[Jamie Bullock]

On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 08:45 -0400, day 5 wrote:
> On Oct 21, 2005, at 5:47 AM, Jamie Bullock wrote:
> 
> > Very common (on unixes):
> >
> > ./configure       (builds the correct Makefile for your system)
> > make              (runs the relevant build commands in the Makefile)
> > make install      (places the compiled files in the correct 
> > directories;
> > 			usually you must be root to do this)
> 
> Um. What if there is no configure and worse, no configure.ac (which you 
> use autoconf with ??)
> 
Well, that reminds me; I forgot to add that in cases where a Makefile is
included, but no configure script, it is usually necessary to
'personalise' the Makefile manually. As IOhannes infers, there is
usually an INSTALL.txt, README, or other useful instructions. If there
is insufficient documentation provided to enable someone to work out the
compile process, I think there are grounds to ask the developer for
guidance.

<snip>
> 
> 
> Easy as that ?? I've used this Makefile for everything from the 
> IOhannes tutorials to recently the iemmatrix.pd_darwin from CVS. Quite 
> generic indeed.
> 

Yes, this is a fine solution. However, I think that ad hoc solutions
like this should be avoided, because by not using the developer's own
build system, you are working around possible errors. Errors, which
should they exist are better reported and fixed than avoided.

Jamie