Build system (was Re: Future of KDE Development)

[Mike Richardson]

On Sunday 20 February 2005 11:02, Harri Porten wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> > I think, we can argue pro and contra high level language in Makefiles for
> > quite some time without going anywhere. Perhaps it would help if you
> > outline what problems you have exactly with the automake syntax. Perhaps
> > we can lift the syntax a bit without giving all power away.
>
> One challenge not so visible yet: portability of commands. We'll have to
> solve the task of accomplishing rules like
>
>   parser:
> 	cd $(srcdir) && \
> 	perl scripts/makeattrs && \
> 	bash scripts/maketags && \
> 	bash scripts/makeprop

This leads to one of the advantages of SCons: because you have a "proper" 
language you can reduce your dependence on commands.

For instance, I've just changed a bit of the Rekall build system that used 
"sed" cos I wan't it to run under Windows (directly, not via Cygwin) and 
"sed" isn't there. So I just recoded it to do the processing in python. Took 
about 30minutes. Probably quick if I'd not had a beer beforehand:)

>
> in a cross-platform manner. Using conditionals might be one solution but
> this would result in maintenance nightmare. A solution for being able to
> express common tasks like copying of files and execution of commands in a
> platform neutral manner would be advisable IMO.
>
> Harri.

Mike
www.rekallrevealed.org