[reSIProcate] Build systems.

[Alan Hawrylyshen]

Folks;

I hate to raise this issue, but I think we have to.  :-)
There are a few people interested in packaging reSIProcate for  
distribution within a larger package framework, for example, the  
Debian project.
In order to make this painless (or less painful), it would be great  
if reSIProcate had a few properties that it does not currently have:

	- Compile on all [project] supported architectures.
	- Build an installable library with version detection in the ABI for  
the library.
	- Create a site-local header file that encapsulates all configure  
options that affect the ABI.
	- Install cleanly from a simple 'make install' command.

One of the ways we can make this work well, and I know we've tried it  
before, is to use the autotool suite. We received some fairly strong  
objections to this, and as I recall they were typically related to  
the pain involved in adding files if you wanted to work on the  
project in a major sense.

I would like to solicit people's opinions on moving back to autotools  
vs extending our build system ourselves to support these simple  
requirements for packaging and better exposure (and releases) of the  
library. I dare say that right now we run very much as an  
experimental project and not as a packaged library.

I welcome a transition to ABI versioning and proper installation  
support.

I suspect that now our developer community is larger and more able to  
accommodate / maintain and extend autotools too. Therefore, if you  
have autotools experience, please take a moment to think this through  
and respond to the list. We'll all benefit from being able to  
evaluate the current state-of-the-community with respect to our  
skills and our goals at this time. I believe the community is much  
stronger than ever so we might be in a great position to make this  
change from 'project' to 'package'.

Thanks very much I welcome all input on this topic,

Alan Hawrylyshen



Alan Hawrylyshen
reSIProcate Project Administrator
http://sipfoundry.org/reSIProcate/
a l a n a t j a s o m i d o t c o m