Re: [GNU Crypto] Re: GCJ build

[Olivier LF]

On Sun, Oct 27, 2002 at 11:03:52PM +1100, Raif S. Naffah wrote:
> * there are lots of pieces of software that contributors will need to 
> install/have to contribute.
> * to build GCJ contributors need to have the auto* tools.
> * to use an open source VM; e.g. Kissme, and the runtime classes that go 
> with it, contributors need to have the auto* tools.
> 
> the interesting thing to note here is that any GNU library/tool required 
> in conjunction with GNU Crypto, already requires what we are debating 
> whether to include or not to include in the list of pre-requisites.
> 
> > > if the above makes sense, and we do not want to over burden
> > > ourselves maintaining stuff that is generated by the tools anyway
> > > (and eliminate the need for including such files in the
> > > deliverables), may be we should make the build rely/use the auto*
> > > magic, even with the gcj/ alternative.
> >
> > I am not sure if I understand that one. Are you saying that even
> > releases should have the dependency on autotools? That would be very
> > unconventional.
> 
> yes i am saying that the release would rely on the auto* tools to build, 
> if the user (a) is not happy using the gnu-crypto.jar from the 
> distribution, or (b) wants to build gnu-crypto.so.
> 
> building GCJ, Classpath, and Kissme, all require the auto* tools.  if we 
> will be unconventional, we will be in good company :-)
> 

That is not correct. The standard way of building a GNU project is to
run  "configure" then make. The only required dependencies are a shell
and a working "make" program, autotools are never assumed to be present.

It is actually the point of these tools, only developers need them, 
users just run "configure" to generate their Makefiles. 

If users were assumed to run "automake", then automake could directly 
probe their environment and output the final Makefiles. It does not
do that because only developers are expected to run it. To that
effect, automake output a zoo of targets for all possible cases.
The final probing and generation of Makefiles is performed by the user 
running "configure".

GCJ follows this strickly, all you have to do is:

- checkout the latest
- ../configure --prefix=...
- make

I have never needed the autotools to build GCJ. In fact I cannot recall a 
single GNU project that asked for more than the "configure" step!

I have only installed the autotools when I started to look at generating
my own Makefile.am. Before that I had hardly heard of them.

Olivier

-- 
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Olivier Louchart-Fletcher