From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by olra.theworths.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAA9B431FAE for ; Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:36:33 -0800 (PST) X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at olra.theworths.org Received: from olra.theworths.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (olra.theworths.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id xrnSvKnM6nZ3 for ; Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:36:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail-yw0-f200.google.com (mail-yw0-f200.google.com [209.85.211.200]) by olra.theworths.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5586F431FBC for ; Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:36:31 -0800 (PST) Received: by ywh38 with SMTP id 38so4572604ywh.6 for ; Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:36:31 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.91.26.7 with SMTP id d7mr6067063agj.1.1258950990974; Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:36:30 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <87y6lyexz8.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org> References: <1258897630-22282-1-git-send-email-jeff@ocjtech.us> <87y6lyexz8.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org> Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:36:30 -0600 Message-ID: <935ead450911222036o141956e0o11056c9d7a45781b@mail.gmail.com> From: Jeffrey Ollie To: Carl Worth Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: Not Much Mail Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add SCons build files. X-BeenThere: notmuch@notmuchmail.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12 Precedence: list List-Id: "Use and development of the notmuch mail system." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:36:33 -0000 On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Carl Worth wrote: > > But I'm afraid I really don't want to switch away from just using (GNU) > make for the actual compilation. > > I don't know anything about scons, but if you can use it to write a > python script that just does the configuration step, (outputting a > Makefile.config say), then that might be very interesting. Well, to me, part of the appeal of SCons is that it doesn't generate Makefiles. This article is a little old, but the first three sections are a pretty good rundown on the limitations of Make. http://www.scons.org/wiki/FromMakeToScons If you really want a tool that generates Makefiles, take a look at CMake. Unfortunately, I think CMake tries to do too much with the Makefiles and they become close to unreadable. In the attempt I made to come up with CMake build files, CMake generates at least 3800 lines of Makefiles (from a starting point of 30 lines of build files). > Some people > have recently told me that python would be a much more sane language for > doing configuration in than shell. Well, Python is a much more sane language for doing just about anything as far as I'm concerned. :) > I don't know if they're right or not, but I'm (somewhat) willing to have > multiple implementations of the configure script (since there's always > the option to just skip it and configure Makefile.config manually). But > I'm definitely not willing to have multiple build systems. I think that having multiple different configuration systems would be pretty awful, especially if people make changes to their favourite configuration system and hope that someone else fixes the others. > Meanwhile, the only advantage I know for automake is that once it's > setup, adding a new file to compile is as simple as adding one file to a > list in the Makefile.am. We've already got notmuch as easy as that with > just adding a file to a list in Makefile.local. Once SCons is set up, adding a new file is just a matter of adding the name of the file to a list as well. CMake is the same, and I'm sure that other systems are similar. > So I'd very much like to continue exploring what we can do with our own > configuration system, (in whatever language/language(s) make sense). It would seem to me that we would be re-inventing a lot of the work already done by other people. > Thanks for listening, Same here. -- Jeff Ollie