Re: Build environment

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Saturday 05 August 2006 14:16, Jeff Bailey wrote:
> I'll start by saying that I have nothing but hate for the build
> environment in grub2.

That's your freedom. :p

> I realise that automake can be equally confusing in many ways, but it
> has two main advantages: 1) Everyone knows it already, 2) Other people
> are helping solve bugs with it.

Automake is unacceptable, since it does not support what GRUB 2 requires. For 
instance, how do you specify different compilers for different targets? I can 
enumerate a lot of deficiency in automake, as I was an automake developer, 
but I don't think it's worth doing here. The only way to fix automake is to 
redesign it from scratch; then this is much more work than writing our own 
Makefile generator.

Note that our generator is designed for those who know automake to understand 
very easily. The way of how it works is quite similar to automake.

>  * No autodetection of Makefile snippet, to auto update them.  No
> generic rules to handle the updating when testing.

I do not understand this. What rules do you need?

>  * No obvious well to tell how it's getting to any given phase.  No
> documentation.

Because I think it is too trivial for those who know GNU make.

>  * Dependancy generation is run too early.  Initial dependancies are
> broken.

Yes, I agree. Please feel free to improve it.

>  * No obvious way to add dependancies to specific files that need them.

It is obvious. You just write a dependency as in GNU make. Like automake, 
every line is verbosely copied.

>  * Order in .mk files is important even for seemingly unrelated clauses.

I haven't notified this.

Okuji