Modularization mailing list and initial strawman proposal

[Dave Airlie]

> BTW: Which tools should be allowed as "minimum set" to build the tree ?
> IMO the requirements shouldn't be far higher than the current
> requirements (otherrwise porting may even be harder) and some of the
> ugly things should only be optional (for example I really do not want
> anyone to be forced to use GNU make (plain POSIX make should be
> suffcient) and perl should be optional, too (and forcing people to use
> bash isn't an option either (IMO POSIX sh or ksh93 are the recommended
> minimum level))).

(damn my web browser chewed this twice now...)

We need something along the lines of the Linux Changes file which
lists the prerequsite tools needed.

Everyone should be aware of autobook:
http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html
It is the best thing out there for autotool stuff..

http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_272.html#SEC272
lists the prereqs for the toolset..

The main one is a decent Bourne Shell.. so Ultrix is out .. but
Solaris/HP-UX I assume should be able to provide one of these..

GNU M4 might be a bit of a pain, but it is an autoconf dependency so
only maintainer/developers would need it not builders.

Perl is the same for automake. maintainer/developers who change
automake inputs need it... builders don't as these scripts will all be
the release tarballs....

We need a minimum level of autoconf/automake/libtool and friends, I'm
not sure what platforms ship with what versions of these but getting a
working set can be a PITA if a platform doesn't ship them..

Sunfreeware has ac 2.59 am 1.9 and libtool 1.5.

And we have to be careful of not falling into the trap of living the
past, just because something worked on the old build system doesn't
mean it will work magically on the new one without someone putting
resources into it.. it might suck for all those huge multi-national
companies with large amounts of money who just can't afford the time,
how that can suck more than for us freetime developers I'll never know
but that's the crap I'm expecting to hear...

Dave.
Dave.