gnitting can be fun, too!

November 18th, 2008 malloc

The first task I’ve taken up for the next release of XBMC is to clean up our build system.  As it stands now, XBMC is a hassle to build on any Linux distrobution except Ubuntu.  This is mostly the fault of our configure and Makefiles not conforming to expected standards.  I’d also like to get our Mac release to build using configure/make as well.  Since I’m not autoconf expert, I started doing some research.  The first thing I stumbled upon was the Gnits Standards.  Wow, they’ve thought of everything!  It’s time to jump down the rabbit hole and see where this takes me.  If you’re interested in learning more about the GNU build system, you may want to take a look as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnits_Standards.

  1. Bernhard Rode
    November 20th, 2008 at 05:52 | #1
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    What about cmake?

    Many projects like KDE use it for now.

    It is platform independent, fast and really easy to use.

  2. malloc
    November 20th, 2008 at 05:59 | #2
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    Funny you should mention that. Another dev actually suggested that as well. I had my doubts at first because projectM uses that, and when I last updated the library I had to deal with cmake for the first time and I was initially turned off. At the time I didn’t realize how powerful it was. The fact that you can create vs.net 2008 project files is awesome, so I’ve started giving it a try. I think the hardest part is going to be dealing with all of the libraries we use that currently build with ‘./configure && make’. I’ll probably send out an e-mail to their mailing list soon to figure out the easiest way around that.

  3. Bernhard Rode
    November 21st, 2008 at 10:58 | #3
    Reply | Quote

    Maybe you should try to get in contact with the kde people… i can’t remember the name of the person who started the migration from configure && make to cmake.

    I will have a look and let you know.

  4. Bernhard Rode
    November 21st, 2008 at 11:02 | #4
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    I just had a short look…
    ol’ google gave me some links you probably should have a look at:

    Article – Why KDE moved to cmake
    http://lwn.net/Articles/188693/
    -> Maybe you can try to contact the author of that article

    Tutorial – From autotools to cmake
    http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/CMake#Converting_autotools-based_KDE_software_to_CMake

    KDE+CMAKE Overview
    http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+CMake+Intro

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