[Box Backup] 0.08PLUS3

[Ben Summers]

On 6 Dec 2004, at 10:54, Martin Ebourne wrote:

> Ben Summers <ben@fluffy.co.uk> wrote:
>> I would like to merge the code, but after 0.09 has been released. It
>> looks like it will be quite a bit of work, as the build system will
>> have to be modified significantly to cope (which is a job for me, I
>> think). But there's only one way to find out, I suppose!
>
> I've been reading the autoconf book which is looking pretty good:
> http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/
>
> After years of general hacking on open source I've never used autoconf 
> from a
> developer's point of view, so thought it might be interesting to give 
> it a
> go. If you're interested in going this route then I don't mind helping 
> out.

To be honest, I'm scared at all the changes which will be necessary, 
and can't see any easy way around the binary / library / test structure 
of the project without lots of scary sub targets.

>
> Of course, windows could be an issue with this. autoconf works on 
> cygwin, but
> I don't think it works natively on windows.

The Win32 native stuff was the bit which would require the changes to 
the build system. Although I don't think it'll be that bad, I think I 
can get away with post-processing the output for a BSD.

>  The solution most projects seem
> to take is to have a separate build system for windows, which given the
> differences in the tool chains makes some sense. Or maybe it would be
> possible to use the cygwin tools at build time but generate an 
> executable
> which only used native libraries, thus not requiring them at run time.

I'd like to use the free MS compiler for the Win32 port. I believe it 
has better code, but more importantly, it's a different compiler which 
will help keep the code clean and compliant. Just using one compiler 
for a "portable" project is slightly non-optimal.

Ben