Re: [Axiom-developer] [build-improvements] Requests for discussion

[Ralf Hemmecke]

Hi Gaby,

I'm sorry if I steal your precious time by my stupid questions...

On 08/02/2006 04:58 PM, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> | I don't see a difference between
> | 
> |  >     (1) modify configure.ac.pamphlet
> |  >     (2) run ./build-setup.sh
> | 
> | and my suggested
> | 
> | 	modify configure.ac.pamphlet
> |       make configure
>
> "make" means that there is a Makefile that is used to make "configure".
> There isn't.  Any makefile must be generated at configure time when
> building Axiom.  I know that is not what the current system does;
> but it is a bug -- it got me several times.

That is your point of view and years of experience. I will trust you in 
setting up Autotools support for Axiom, since for now that is more 
important then sticking to pamphlet style. That you are going to 
document everything in some form is clear to me.

But still. I assumed that we distribute the sources with configure and 
an initial Makefile. That would be generated first by you via

  notangle configure.ac.pamphlet > configure.ac
  autoconf configure.ac > configure
  ./configure
  svn commit configure
  svn commit Makefile

That Makefile would contain code to generate "configure". So it 
basically contains your "build-setup.sh" script.

If I am an ordinary user, I start with ./configure && make.
If I am more advanced and change some stuff in configure.ac.pamphlet,
I start with "./configure" to make sure that I have "noweb" and then 
re-iterate via "make configure && ./configure". I really cannot see a 
problem with that.

> | I know that "make" checks whether the "Makefile" is as new as it could
> | be. But does it check whether there is Makefile.in or Makefile.am and
> | re-generates the Makefile from that???
>
> No.  Makefile.in usually contains variables that need to be
> substituted.  Makefile.am is even at higher level.  You need
> Automake.  Now, when you have the full Autotools in place, if you
> modify Makefile.am or configure.ac and you say "make", there usually
> is a dectection and autoconf is run to regenerate

But I never modify Makefile.am or configure.ac. Only the corresponding 
pamphlet files. So there clearly there is a target like

%: %.pamphlet
        notangle $< > $@

or something the like.

Ralf