On Tue, 5 Feb 2013, Oleksiy Ch wrote:
> Hello guys, > > Let me raise one question: what is a best preferred build system you > consider for CDE and in general? I address this question to people > having experience with maintaining *nix software in general and writing > code in particular. > > Generally should CDE stay with Imake or move to other solution keeping > simple as possible. Ugly gnu auto* or hand made simple and elegant > configure ? What is your choice and vision? Please share your thoughts. Generally the answer to this for me is the same as for most other software: The best build system is the one that lets me build on both FreeBSD and various Linux variants with the least amount of pain, and that lets me have a prayer of debugging/fixing it when it goes tits-up. Autotools provides the former wonderfully, but boy does it fail miserably at the latter! That may well be due to ignorance on my part -- I'm far from an expert on it -- but every time I've had to debug anything more complex than "forgot to install libfoobar" I've found myself lost in a maze of twisty configurations, all alike, few documented, none recognizable. I'm also a pretty big believer in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought. After all, I wouldn't be using CDE if I were after the latest, cutting-edge desktop environment. Personally I'd work on simplifying, debugging, and documenting what's there before considering a complete do-over, but that's my approach to software in general... All that said, somebody's already made progress on a patch to use autotools, and others have spent a fair amount of time learning about how the imake-based system works -- so the opinions of those people should count approximately a thousand times more than those of a user who hasn't spent significant time hacking the build system. ;) -Rob ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ cdesktopenv-devel mailing list cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel
