[fedora-java] Autotools?

[Jeff Johnston]

Gareth,

   The Autotools plugin is very much in its infancy.  There are no firm 
plans regarding how it will be released.

   Andrew and Ben have discussed the project briefly with the CDT folks 
at EclipseCon and there is reportedly interest in pushing the work into 
the CDT.  Obviously, that is a preferred strategy.  We can make it much 
leaner and cleaner with the CDT folks' help.  I haven't started a 
serious dialog with the CDT folks yet, but it is certainly on my TODO list.

   At the moment, the project is a hack with us basing ourselves on a 
Managed Make project and stodifying pieces of Std Make (e.g. Make target 
support).  This approach was taken mostly because a Managed Make project 
had an extension for Makefile generation which we matched up with 
configuration.  The Std Make project has Make Target support which is a 
must-have feature when dealing with all the myriad of existing projects.

   Our target is existing Open Source C/C++ projects.  Complex projects 
with history behind them.  I am the head maintainer of newlib and so my 
first goal was to get newlib to configure/build/install from within the 
CDT (done, btw).  Newlib has some interesting problems and I am sure 
there are many other projects out there that will prove to be even more 
challenging.

   Short-term has been essentially hacking together a working model 
which we are building upon and refining.  We have not ironed out what 
the full feature-set will look like and definitely want to solicit 
requirements.  At present, you check out an Open Source project, then in 
a separate step, you convert it to an Autotools C/C++ project 
(New..Other).  Through project properties, you can set up your 
configuration options, where the build ends up (currently, defaults to 
build subdirectory), include path, and various CDT Managed Make options. 
  The include path is required to get the indexing to work properly. 
Once this is done, you can add Make targets via <Build Special Targets>, 
which has been added to the project menu.  This feature corresponds 
directly with Create Make Target/Build Make Target for a Std Make 
project, but we couldn't use that once we had chosen the Managed Make 
base.  Workarounds of this type are things the CDT folks can help us 
clean up.  If you choose the default Rebuild Project, etc.. you are 
dealing with the standard "all" and "clean" make targets.  Configuration 
is done for you (including autogen support) and the results are stored 
in a separate console.  I just added help docs for the Gnu tools (gcc, 
binutils, automake, autoconf).  There are definitely warts, but it is 
starting to take shape and you can easily see its potential.

   Long-term, we would like to see development of C/C++ Open Source 
projects see some more of the benefits that Java programmers have.  One 
of the key changes I would like to see is live compilation/parsing as 
you get for Java.  If we could eliminate typos, flag missing 
declarations and illegal operations, or suggest include files, then the 
CDT ends up being a helpful tool to Open Source C/C++ development.  We 
have had brief discussions with gcc folks here to see what it would take 
to have the compiler help with sort of thing, but it is large 
undertaking.  Another possibility would be to attack this problem from 
the indexing side.  For all I know, the CDT folks are already examining 
this.  Again, long term, but important to start now.

   I hope this clarifies things a bit.  I will be updating the web-page 
shortly to provide a lot more details than is presently there.

-- Jeff J.

From: "Foster, Gareth" <gareth.foster at siemens.com>
 > To: fedora-devel-java-list at redhat.com
 > X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72)
 > Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:00:58 +0100
 > Subject: [fedora-java] Autotools?
 >
 > Hello list,
 >
 > This is a pretty open ended question really. Autotools plugin? Going in
 > extras for FC5? Only going in FC6? Abandoned? Subject to furious hacking?
 > Picked up code from Kdevelop?
 >
 > They are all questions people would be interested in having the 
answers to.
 > How about a status update or roadmap? As a reply to this, or maybe as a
 > gnomedesktop.org post?
 >
 > Cheers,
 >
 > Gaz
 >
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