[omniORB] Re: Autoconf/automake and corba (was: Re: [tao-users] Need Advice)

[Dan Kegel]

Chris Cleeland wrote:
> One thing to remember in all of this is that ACE & TAO are supported on MANY
> platforms for which autoconf isn't supported:
> 
> - Windows

You might be a bit behind the times - I think it's starting
to support Windows fairly well.  (I haven't tried this myself yet.)

> - Windows CE (Pocket PC)
> - VxWorks
> - Chorus
> - MVS
> - OpenVMS
> - pSOS
> 
> just to name a few.  autoconf is cool, and certainly makes building easier
> and more predictable for a user, but at least with the way things are set up
> now, there's one way to build for all platforms (except Windows).

That method can continue to be used for all non-posix platforms.

> Is there a way that autoconf could easily accomodate these other situations?
> The last time I checked, autoconf (actually, the configure script generated
> by autoconf) goes through a discovery phase on the target platform to discern
> which features are supported and which aren't.  This phase assumes a minimum
> set of tools, e.g., sh, sed, etc.--basically, a POSIX-like shell environment.
> How can autoconf support environments for which this isn't available?

By implementing a POSIX environment :-)  That's what Cygwin did.  

Cheers,
Dan