RE: automatic built system and cvs

[Zieg, Mark]

> is there anybody who uses a central repository for an automatic built
> run? The problem we have is about nine projects, developed on different
> platforms, and a standardized delivery. The paper I read about an
> automatic built system suggested the use of a central repository and
> built routine with PERL scripts. Can you help me if those scripts
> already exists? I think it will be a problem with Windows and
> Unix to get both in the bag.

Others will say that "CVS is not a build system," so I'll skip that.

However, you can indeed manage multiple cross-platform projects using CVS as
the repository, in conjunction with a scripted build system of your own
devise.  However, you pretty much do have to write the build scripts
yourself.

In our project, we first checkout a working copy of the code from the
repository, then we run an inhouse bourne script to "customize" the code
(tweaking Makefiles, paths, configuration files, etc) for a specific target
platform.  We may move to GNU Autoconf for that later.

"Make" is our build tool.  If you're using Java, then Ant may be be a better
build tool than make.  We currently only use Perl for adhoc scripts and for
our regression test suite.  

As to Windows/Unix compatibility, we found that our app, already running on
IRIX, Solaris, and Linux, was surprisingly easy to build under Windows when
using the freeware Cygwin POSIX environment.  You might want to check that
out (cygwin.com).  All of our existing bourne, perl, and make scripts, plus
the C/C++ app itself, ran fine with very little modification.

-Mark Z