[PATCH build] Separate build and repository functions.

[Gaetan Nadon]

On Fri, 2010-09-17 at 14:13 -0400, Trevor Woerner wrote:

> 
> Pull out the repository (i.e. git) functionality from the build
> script.
> Provide a separate script for running arbitrary commands in each of
> the
> modules which are built.


I like the idea, but not how it is implemented. Guess what, we use to
have 2 scripts, one to do clone/pull and build.sh without git
operations. Do you know why the git functionality has been merged into
build.sh? Because each script contained it's own list of modules which
is a pain to maintain.

You intuitively bridged the gap by writing the module set to a
build.modules file to feed build.sh. That's one step forward compared to
what we had. The downer is that the user would now have 3 files to worry
about and how they relate to each other. Each script having its own set
of options to memorize. You need to write instructions and so on.

Consider future extensibility, what if you want to use sed to make
global changes to a larger set of modules, or run lint-like script to
report possible Makefile issues. 

I came close to making a suggestion, as I have been thinking about this
for a while. The angle I was contemplating is to isolate the module list
in file (data only) and have as many scripts as required to provide as
many features as desired. All directed from build.sh with one easy to
use interface. The module list can be generated in the case of first
time use.

I think jhbuild uses this concept of module set. In build.sh, having
just one module list does not suit all purposes. There could be a list
for those who only want to build the server and its dependencies.

This is a bigger project than it looks, but we are at that point where
build.sh can hardly be improved without significant rework if we want to
keep its ease of use.

If you add pluggable module list and a unified user interface to what
you did, it would complete the picture.

Gaetan
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