I have developed a large Java class library (http://sourceforge.net/projects/amberarcher) that includes a JNI component I'd like to expand in the next version. Since I have a chance to Do Things the Right Way from the start as much as possible, I wanted to set it up to use autoconf, automake and libtool and, if at all possible, support builds on MacOS X and mingw32 as well as the usual UNIX suspects. Since the library is mostly Java, portability of the C components is obviously of pantamount importantance.
What I lack are good examples, and good documentation on making these combinations. I saw in May there was a debate on this list about the best way to combine MacOS X "bundle"-based JNI libraries with standard autoconf, but no real solution seemed to come of that. I read the Goat Book, but it doesn't cover JNI, and doesn't cover MacOS X at all (for obvious reasons). Some example issues I've hit: * the Goat Book's section on mingw32--which I found very helpful, BTW--provides no information on combining Win32 libraries (like the RPC runtime in mingw32) with dynamic libraries built on mingw32--for some reason they're always static because I have -mno-undefined-symbols, and it thinks the mingw32 librpcrt4.a stub is a static library rather than a DLL stub. LibSDL does this somehow, but the configure script is so huge that I haven't been able to figure out how yet. So I can build a JNI DLL using mingw32...but not one that makes any Win32 calls! * On the MacOS X side, I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that the "bundle" system seems to want to compile and link all in one fell swoop for JNI libraries, and how to get that to fit into a standard configure script * To make matters more complicated, the existing Java code is all built with ant. So I'm not sure how to set up an autoconf target that runs $srcdir/tools/ant/bin/ant that gets executed as part of the "all" target. If I set up SUBDIRS=src and in that a Makefile.am with SUBDIRS=share native how do I write the Makefile.am in "share" so it kicks off the ant script as part of its "all" target to ensure this gets run before we get to the native Makefile, which builds the JNI code? * what's the recommended way to selectively include some objects in a DLL/shared object and not others? Some native functions--like the code behind the "Symlink" object never make sense on Win32, for instance, while others--like the code behind the "UUID" object have Win32 and UNIX equivalents. This is important enough to me that I'm willing to write fairly extensively on the topic & contribute it back under FDL if I can figure out a way to do this, but I need some serious autoconf toolset help to get there. Anyone willing & able? Thank you very, very much in advance. --kd
