[omniORB] Few comments on omniORB 4 build process

[Duncan Grisby]

On Monday 11 March, Teemu Torma wrote:

> - Headers are still depending on preprocessor options given by makefiles 
> (like __OSVERSION__).  I think only CORBA_sysdep.h should use those for the 
> old-style building, and omniconfig.h should have everything othewise.  
> Currently at least omnithread.h uses makefile supplied options to determine 
> which threading package is needed.

That makes sense. I'll look into changing it. Even better, if you
supply a patch, that will save me some time.

> - The autoconf makefiles write over the old-style makefiles.  I think the 
> build process should not modify any distributed file.  One solution would be 
> to have the old-style makefiles called Makefile, and autoconf ones 
> GNUmakefile.

That only happens if you build in the source directory. The
yet-to-be-written instructions for the autoconf build will recommend
building in a separate directory.

The makefiles are all called GNUmakefile to ensure GNU make is used.

> - Currently the makefiles assume that openssl is installed.  I am
> sometimes building it against the openssl that is built at the same
> time.  It would be nice if there would be possibility to tell this
> to autoconf (the only problem is that it assumes that libraries are
> under /lib in openssl root, which is not the case in the build
> tree).

I think trying to cope with things like that will make everything too
tricky, and even more complicated. If you can come up with a way of
doing it that isn't too cumbersome, I'll include it.

> - The install directories are missing DESTDIR (or similiar) handling to 
> install to a different location for packaging.  Of course one could change 
> prefix, but if something is recompiled, it might screw something else.

That's definitely a good idea. Is there a standard way for doing that?

> - Just a personal wish: I would prefer the top level makefile to be called 
> Makefile, instead of GNUmakefile.  That leaves room for GNUmakefile to be 
> used for controlling the build process (that's what I am doing with other 
> autoconf software). 

As I say, we call it GNUmakefile to ensure GNU make is used. If we
don't do that, people use the wrong make version and get strange and
confusing errors.

Thanks for your comments,

Duncan.

-- 
 -- Duncan Grisby  \  Research Engineer  --
  -- AT&T Laboratories Cambridge          --
   -- http://www.uk.research.att.com/~dpg1 --