Build system, take 2



On 2013-03-17, Rupert Swarbrick <rswarbrick at gmail.com> wrote:

>  (1) The status quo. Use checked-in copies of automatically generated
>      files. These may or may not be in date. Those that are used less
>      often (eg ones for Windows users or proprietary lisps) might be
>      massively out of date.
>
>  (2) Tell anyone wishing to compile Maxima that they must run "make" at
>      least once in the source tree. This will sort out all of those
>      pesky automatic files for them and then they can go back to the
>      Lisp world from then on.
>
>  (3) Try to support a couple of configurations with no Makefile. That
>      is, when we roll a tarball we make sure to build all the files that
>      are needed for compilation with GCL, say. This wouldn't be a
>      ridiculous workload / expense for the release manager, but it could
>      support some Make-less users.

I think I'm in favor of #2. It builds stuff correctly, at the expense of
requiring Make on any build system. We may get some flames for that. I'm
willing to accept that.

However, I wonder if Make is currently among the requirements for
building on Windows. If so, all is well. Otherwise, is it a problem to
install a suitable Make? Can any Make for Windows run the Maxima
Makefile without modification?

best

Robert Dodier