Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: news and survey

[Julio M. Merino Vidal]

On Wed, 2005-02-02 at 05:11 -0500, graydon hoare wrote:
> Matthew A. Nicholson wrote:
> 
> > Scons will configure and build cross toolchains and you can make it 
> > build native dependencies with what ever you want it to.
> 
> I think you're misunderstanding what I mean.
> 
> what I mean is that if I have a C++ file, and I'm on a linux host, and I 
> write down the name of the C++ file in a scons script, the default scons 
> rulebase is not going to do the following:
> 
>   - download toolchain sources from gcc.gnu.org
>   - configure the toolchain for mingw cross
>   - build the tool chain and install it in a scratch directory
>   - download boost and popt from the net
>   - build them under the mingw cross
>   - build my C++ file under the mingw cross, linked against the
>     built popt and boost
>   - run windows under qemu, and execute any tests I have of the results
> 
> of course if I had more patience I could write scons rules to do that. I 
> could also write automake rules to do that, or shell scripts. but the 
> fact that I *could* write such rules doesn't make the rules exist. that 
> process is what we need a build volunteer to do, and scons won't, by 
> default, automate any of that for us. no tools currently will.

Maybe pkgsrc (http://www.pkgsrc.org/) could be of some use here. 
Despite its name, the NetBSD's Packages Collection, it is very portable.
ATM, Interix support exists, which is able to build around 200 packages
(and is constantly being improved).  If you don't really need to use
MinGW, this may be an option.  (Or add MinGW support to pkgsrc ;)

> these are fine virtues, and I think scons is a fine program. I would 
> like to use it. I am currently continuing with autotools because last 
> time I tried an scons conversion, I ran out of patience with all the 
> rules it didn't know, that I already had covered by autotools rules. 
> it's just a matter of sloth. I didn't want to write the rules myself.

I personally wouldn't like to need scons, specially because it needs
Python.  The more dependencies you need, the more difficult will be to
install the program.  And, IMHO, the auto* tools can do a (quite) good
job if handled properly.

FWIW, I started my own build tool, called Buildtool, aimed to replace
the auto* tools.  But I used shell scripting; unfortunately, it's now
unmaintenable.  (I hope to be able to rewrite it in the not-so-far
future, when I "finish" another project I'm working on.)  But well, not
that it may be considered ATM ;)

Cheers,

-- 
Julio M. Merino Vidal <address@hidden>
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jmmv/
The NetBSD Project - http://www.NetBSD.org/