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> Why is figlet source included in xen? Wouldn't it make more sense to alter
> xen/Makefile, to have compile.h built from a .in, and the figlet view of the
> version info, and have the upstream developers regen the figlet part when the
> version changes?

Perhaps it should be under xen/tools/figlet rather than xen/figlet,
but it is tiny and it is useful to have the banner auto-gen'ed from
the version number in the Makefile. There's no obvious advantage to
removing it -- it hardly bloats the repository and it takes negligible
time to build.

Using autoconf/automake would make sense for a highly portable
application that must compile on many platforms with many different
environments and compilers. For Xen I think it'll just complicate
things. We only support one arch at the moment -- as others are
incorporated they will extend compile.h manually for their own
compilation environment if it isn't GCC. The main thing that autoconf
does of course is shield you from environment differences (e.g. sysv
vs. bsd) -- but Xen never includes system headers so this is also a
non-issue.

> I'm willing to modify the build system to do this. I'm also fixing several
> other poor implementation of things.

We recommend as far as possible that you don't work on improvements in
a vacuum. The earlier you let us know what you're doing, the earlier
you get feedback on what we do and don't want.

-- Keir


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On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, Keir Fraser wrote:

> > Why is figlet source included in xen? Wouldn't it make more sense to alter
> > xen/Makefile, to have compile.h built from a .in, and the figlet view of the
> > version info, and have the upstream developers regen the figlet part when the
> > version changes?
>
> Perhaps it should be under xen/tools/figlet rather than xen/figlet,
> but it is tiny and it is useful to have the banner auto-gen'ed from
> the version number in the Makefile. There's no obvious advantage to
> removing it -- it hardly bloats the repository and it takes negligible
> time to build.

That wasn't the point I was trying to make.

Who changes the version? Only the upstream developers. When building the
dist tarball, the upstream developers should regen a banner.h, so that
downstream users don't need to have figlet around, nor installed.

> Using autoconf/automake would make sense for a highly portable
> application that must compile on many platforms with many different
> environments and compilers. For Xen I think it'll just complicate
> things. We only support one arch at the moment -- as others are
> incorporated they will extend compile.h manually for their own
> compilation environment if it isn't GCC. The main thing that autoconf
> does of course is shield you from environment differences (e.g. sysv
> vs. bsd) -- but Xen never includes system headers so this is also a
> non-issue.
>
> > I'm willing to modify the build system to do this. I'm also fixing several
> > other poor implementation of things.
>
> We recommend as far as possible that you don't work on improvements in
> a vacuum. The earlier you let us know what you're doing, the earlier
> you get feedback on what we do and don't want.

For instance, docs/check_pkgs is rather stupid. It calls which twice, which
is unnescessary. It also takes the output of which(``), which is not needed.

In addition, documentation has the same uses as figlet. Generally only those
doing upstream development need to rebuild the docs. Most users don't have
any need to build docs, so they could be pre-built in the tarball.


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Keir Fraser wrote:

> Using autoconf/automake would make sense for a highly portable
> application that must compile on many platforms with many different
> environments and compilers. For Xen I think it'll just complicate
> things. We only support one arch at the moment -- as others are
> incorporated they will extend compile.h manually for their own
> compilation environment if it isn't GCC. The main thing that autoconf
> does of course is shield you from environment differences (e.g. sysv
> vs. bsd) -- but Xen never includes system headers so this is also a
> non-issue.

If anyone is thinking of changing the build system, I can highly
recommend Jam. It handles stuff like dependency scanning and
multi-directory builds much better than Make does, allows more portable
build specifications, and unlike other modern Make-replacements it does
not need a full language runtime (like Ant or Scons do) to run.

Jacob


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