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Re: [reSIProcate] Autotools after the directory reorg


On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 12:33 -0500, Robert Sparks wrote:
> Jay -
> 
> I've pretty much given up on an autotools based parallel build system.
> 
> While there are a few things that it does that the custom build  
> system doesn't do,
> the warts that come with it appear to be  too much for most of this  
> development
> community to live with. I'm going to try to see if putting effort  
> into getting it to do
> those things will pay off better than trying to maintain the extra  
> build system.
> 
> Among those are:
> 
> + being able to build separate pieces of the project independently,  
> leveraging
>     other parts that may already be built. (The current notion of all  
> the projects having
>     to live in particular relative places in the filesystem is  
> something we need to address).
> 
> + being able to configure against different instances of third party  
> dependencies.
>     (such as different versions of bdb as you were running into below).
>     This needs to be scriptable (being able to specify everything on  
> the configure
>     command line is sufficient).
> 
> + making sure that the resulting built libraries can be _used_ from  
> other autotools
>     based projects without having to "install" them.
> 
> What else is missing from your perspective?

- Detecting when dependencies are missing or the wrong version.

- Not using libtool to build shared libraries
  This is useful because a libtool library carries metadata with it.
  If library B uses library A, I can just declare that I'm using B
  and it will take care of making sure that any flags needed for A
  are included.

I'm more than willing to help with any autotools issues, but I agree
that it's probably pointless to shift if you're going to try to maintain
it as a parallel system.

FYI - an interesting selection from a list of reasons why open source
projects don't get wide participation:

http://www.openxource.com/crossings/2004/11/21/antipattern_ignore_established_tools/brief

-- 
Scott Lawrence  tel:+1-781-938-5306;ext=162 or sip:slawrence@xxxxxxxxxxx
  Consulting Engineer - Pingtel Corp.  http://www.pingtel.com/
  sipXpbx project coordinator - SIPfoundry  http://www.sipfoundry.org/sipX