As you may know, in the past years I have made a couple of experiments
regarding the
build system of AOO. With the resulting experience I
would now like to start to work on improving the build system. I have
in mind a
"soft conversion" that gradually replaces parts of the existing build
system, not a big push that takes years to complete and then breaks
everything.
I would like to start with some under-the-hood changes to how the
build process is controlled. At the moment we have prj/build.lst
files that control how build.pl builds the dmake modules. Then there
are makefiles.mk in directories of dmake modules and finally we have
makefiles in gbuild modules. All of them are not makefiles in the
classical sense, i.e. they seldomly contain directives of how to build
a target. They are data files that primarily define dependencies
between targets or, for example, which object files go into a shared
library. They use three different, mostly unspecified and
undocumented, notations.
The first work item would be the conversion of these files into a
unified XML syntax. At first these XML files would be converted back
to the old syntax on-demand and on-the-fly so that the old build tool
chain can still be used. Subsequent steps would then improve or replace
parts of this tool chain.
If you don't object to this general plan then I would start the XML
conversion with the prj/build.lst files as proof of concept. I would
also start to write Wiki pages that explain in more detail how the
current build process works, what its draw backs are, and how, in my
opinion, it can be improved.
Best regards,
Andre
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