I just pushed the first example of a configure script

[David Holmes]

Hi Fredrik,

Can you clarify something please regarding the division of responsibility 
for configure-time versus build-time. It sounds from what you wrote that you 
need to run configure one-way to prepare to do cross-compilation builds, and 
another way to do local builds - is that the case?

Thanks,
David

On 20/08/2011 1:45 AM, Fredrik Öhrström wrote:
> As you will quickly notice, the resulting source code now does not compile.
> :-)
> This update was needed just to show the basic principles behind
> the intended use of configure. I.e. we use only autoconf to generate
> a configure script. We do not use any of the other auto tools.
>
> When the configure script is run, a spec.gmk file is created
> where all settings are localized. Thus we want to move away
> from configuring the build using env variables.
>
> The configure script has a standardized api for help and
> settings and cross compilation support that is familiar
> to many. The configure script will do lookups
> for tools and sanity checks, that were previously
> spread out in different Makefiles.
>
> The configure script can give the programmer assistance
> when looking for tools, and even give context sensitive help on
> how to acquire needed libraries.
>
> There is also support for configuring a standardized set
> of build dependencies that are automatically downloaded
> and used for the build. An example of such a conf file
> is located in common/config/builddeps.conf.example
> This is a feature that we will use in-house, but you are
> welcome to use it too, but you will have to setup your own
> builddeps servers.
>
> To make it actually compile, is left as a reader exercise!
> Or you can just wait for the next commit....
>
> //Fredrik
>
> PS: Unless you are running from an x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu system,
> you will need to install config.guess and config.sub from the autoconf
> package into common/config. To rebuild the configure script you also
> need pkg.m4 from pkg-config. These files will be added for real
> to the repositories as soon as the paperwork is done here.
>