Re: Best way to organize a portable framework...

[Marcus Müller]

On 08.11.2003, at 17:48, Jason Clouse wrote:

> Has anybody here set up makefiles for a portable framework, such that  
> simply typing 'make' builds on either GNUstep or OS X?  Or is it  
> better to use ProjectBuilder files on Mac OS and just have a GNUstep  
> makefile (for which there are plenty of examples I can look at)?  The  
> framework is simple (Foundation and an external C library) but is only  
> set up to build on the Mac right now.

I've done so for EDCommon  
(http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/software/EDFrameworks/ 
download.html#EDCommon) [Note: you need the current version from CVS].  
I'm somewhat undecided whether this is the best idea or not. On the one  
hand it greatly simplifies maintainence since there's only one build  
system, and once you've figured out what's OS dependend the rest is  
really smooth. On the other hand, the new build system introduced with  
Xcode has a number of advantages (distributed builds, backwards  
compatibility, speed (!)) that you automatically loose when using GS  
make. Now there is some potential for GS make to incorporate some  
features in the future as they are closely related to gcc 3.3 and not  
Xcode specialties at all, but right now this hasn't been done, yet.

Anyways, our new strategy is two-fold. Because you have to provide GS  
makefiles for building on GNUstep anyways, it's not a bad idea to spend  
some (probably easy) extra effort to achieve real cross-platform  
awareness there, so you instantly get cross-platform build-ability by  
using GS make. Xcode is the tool of choice on OS X and if you can  
afford to provide it too, well just do it. That's what we're currently  
doing in EDCommon - most of the time both build systems are in sync.  
That's the problem with having two build systems - it's easy to forget  
to make a necessary change in the other system that you (as a  
developer) are currently not using.

Cheers,

  Marcus

--
Marcus Mueller  .  .  .  crack-admin/coder ;-)
Mulle kybernetiK  .  http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com
Current projects: finger znek@mulle-kybernetik.com