AW: Hello (Erlang) World!

[Rick Pettit]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 03:14:45PM +0200, Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB) wrote:
> In general, I think the big problem with build tools is to find a
> good set of default options that suit the vast majority of people.
> Almost every detail needs to be configurable, but you should be 
> able to get off the ground with a minimum of fuzz. This is quite
> difficult to achieve. Good documentation and tutorials help, of 
> course, and 'builder' lacks those, I'm afraid.

This is another reason autotools has worked so well for us. You can build
most anything by simply running:

  prompt> configure.sh
  prompt> gmake
  prompt> gmake install

Pretty standard. If you want to build against a different version of a 
dependent library (the latest-greatest is found automatically if not otherwise
specified) by doing:

  prompt> configure.sh --with-<some lib>=<non-default version>

The defaults "do the right thing" for the guy who just wants to build a 
release, yet the overrides allow an expert to make custom builds.

Our build system also directly supports the notion of development vs.
production builds, so that a developer can build a developement release and
test on his/her local system without disturbing production applications.

-Rick