dead code in build.sh?

[Matt Dew]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Dan Nicholson <dbn.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Matt Dew <matt at osource.org> wrote:
>> Would I be burned in effigy if I asked about:
>> 1) just moving the build system away from autotools to cmake
>> 2) having Kconfig for Xorg like the linux kernel has
>> 3) auto generated nightly tarballs for all the modules
>> 4) then pitching build.sh,x-jhbuild,  and all the other 'official' build scripts
>
> For this last point, I don't see how cmake would help you build 50
> packages in the correct order. I'm pretty sure the intelligent parts
> of build.sh and jhbuild aren't about typing ./configure.

All, I appreciate the comments and hopefully this will address them.

I'll step back and write down a little history and where I'm going with this.
Keith correctly surmised what I was getting at:

How to make it easier for (non-Xdeveloper) people to get the latest X
code and be able to use/test it.

  When I started 6 months ago I wanted to use the latest X.  That
requires using either a source tarball or pulling from git. I choose
the latter.  As there are >200 total modules, I had to ask.  I asked
around and found out that there are 3 scripts that can be used for
building X from the git tree:   jhbuild,  x-jhbuild and build.sh, not
to mention all the little personal scripts that people have for
building just what they are interested in, which is what most devs do
(correct me if I'm wrong.)    I tried each of those 3 scripts and each
one of them had different problems.  x-jhbuild was the only one that
actually worked for me, and that was after Dirk Wallenstein helped me
multiple times.

What script is used or how it works, I'm not really that interested
in, to be honest.   I don't really care about cmake itself. I
mentioned it because I've seen/heard of other projects that switched
and they seemed happy with the results. (I'm talking KDE specifically,
but that itself doesn't matter.)

When these scripts break, whether it's because a wrong version of
libtool or whatever,  it's frustrating.  Dan, you are correct. the
hard part isn't ./configure, it's building in the correct place and
correct order.
cmake doens't really bring anything on that front.

Adrian,  usage of the autotools isn't hard when it works.  When
something doesn't work though...   what do you do?

The Kconfig item is for easily seeing dependencies. It seems to work
well for the linux kernel.

Ok, i don't want to waste people's time.    I think I've said my
peace.  I am not trying to be the guy that comes to a project and says
'you guys should do it this way.'  I am trying to be a guy that sees:
two different people (Dirk and Trevor)
trying to solve the same problem (building X from source)
in parallel (build.sh and x-jhbuild)

and stir up some discussion about if there's another (possibly better)
place to solve this problem and not duplicate effort.

I very much appreciate the work they are doing and would like to use
their efforts to make it easier for more people to test X without
having to rely on the distributions.

Matt
(I hope I've responded to any/all questions people had.)