Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

["Augustin Chéneau (BTuin)" <btuin@mailo.com>]

Le 23/05/2023 à 02:44, Po Lu a écrit :
> "Augustin Chéneau (BTuin)" <btuin@mailo.com> writes:
> 
>> Oh I didn't mean a simple toggle, I meant an arbitrary command
>> variant. For instance with Builder you can define a "debug2",
>> "compile_arm" or any other command.
> 
> I don't understand how this works; before you can change targets, you
> need to regenerate the build system for your program by running
> configure.
> 
> Are you saying that in Builder, `configure' is an extra step, run each
> time the target changes?
> 

Yes, it is.

Let's illustrate with an hypothetical workflow: you work on Emacs, and 
you want to easily switch between multiple configurations, say "minimal" 
which enable very few features to ease debugging and "regular" which 
enable many features, such as pgtk, json, native compilation... (and 
possibly many other variants, there is no limit of number).

First, you execute `builder-configure' which detects the build system, 
finds Autotools and asks you to chose between "minimal", "regular", and 
others.  Once you've chosen, the minibuffer is filled with the "minimal" 
command (for example `../configure --without-threads 
--without-toolkit-scroll-bars`.  You press enter, the command is 
executed in a compile buffer.

Then, you need to compile.  You call `builder-compile', and you may have 
to chose between multiple targets, for example "default" with the value 
"make" and "parallel" with the value "make -jN", N being the number of 
cores on you processor.  Once you've chosen, the same as for configure 
happens, the command is executed in a compilation buffer.

If you want to change to the "regular" configuration target, you call 
`builder-configure` and select this target.  Then, you call 
`builder-compile` to compile the project.

So each time you want to change the target you call `builder-configure`. 
  But with out of tree builds, it could be possible to create one build 
directory for each configuration, which would remove the need to execute 
the configuration step each time you want to change.  It's not yet 
available as it is really not trivial to implement, but I'll try to find 
a satisfying solution.