On Thu, 2017-02-09 at 10:32 +0000, Emmanuele Bassi wrote: > Hi; > > On 9 February 2017 at 09:56, Sebastian Geiger (Lanoxx) <lan...@gmx.ne > t> wrote: > > > It would be great to have an additional entry on this > > page that is maybe named "build automation" or "building the > > application" and that contains > > some information about how to setup the build system. > > I'm not entirely sure GNOME should have a section on best practices > for the build system you may or may not be using. GNOME doesn't > really > mandate *how* you build your application or library code, as long as: > > - if it's an application > - it installs a desktop file under XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications > - it installs a DBus service file in the DBus service directory > - it installs an appdata XML file > - if it's a library > - it installs a pkg-config file under PKG_CONFIG_PATH > - the pkg-config file contains the appropriate compiler and > linker > flags to find the headers and shared objects > > All of these best practices are really general ones, for any build > system > > If you want to learn the best practices for autotools, I can strongly > recommend reading the "Autotools Mythbuster" book: > > https://autotools.io/index.html > > > I know we already have a bunch of good documentation on the wiki, > > for example: > > > > https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/GnomeGoals/ModernAutotools > > https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/GnomeGoals/NicerBuilds > > https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeCommon/Migration > > These are mostly goals for GNOME projects hosted on git.gnome.org — > and they are "nice to have", not strictly mandatory.
It would be good if the first two were consolidated a bit. They probably also need updating, since they’re now quite old. > > However it seems to me that none of these pages offers > > a really up to date information and consistent summary > > of how a typical gnome application should be setup > > today. > > Again, the Autotools Mythbuster book is probably what you're looking > for. > > > A few example questions for which I would hope to find answers in > > the documentation are: > > > > 1. What are best practices when setting up autogen.sh, is there are > > recommended template > > to start with. I know the GnomeCommon migration guide lists > > one, but > > I did not find it useful. > > In particular because it contains calls to both glib-gettextize > > and > > intltoolize and the page later > > mentions that exactly this should not be done. > > Your autogen.sh should only call `autoreconf`; that will take care of > things like libtoolize and gettextize. > > If you are writing a library and using gtk-doc, then you'll need to > call `gtkdocize` prior to `autoreconf`. > > There are a couple of additional things for helping non-srcdir builds > and a autobuilders like Continuous: > > * switch to "$srcdir" before calling anything that will need to > modify the srcdir, e.g. autoreconf and gtkdocize > * if your autogen.sh wants to helpfully call the generated configure > script, then check if the NOCONFIGURE environment variable is set > first > > The smallest autogen.sh I can think of is: > > ```sh > test -n "$srcdir" || srcdir=`dirname "$0"` > test -n "$srcdir" || srcdir=. > > olddir=`pwd` > cd "$srcdir" > > autoreconf --force --install --verbose || exit $? > > cd "$olddir" > test -n "$NOCONFIGURE" || exec "$srcdir/configure" "$@" > ``` Can we please standardise on the autogen.sh given in https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeCommon/Migration#autogen.sh ? It does everything we need, and meets all the standards (like build- api). If you’ve got improvements to make, please make them on that page. Sebastian: the paragraph immediately above the example does say that you should remove one or both of the intltoolize/glib-gettextize calls as appropriate. > > 2. What are best practices regarding builddir!=srcdir builds? Are > > there > > any special steps required when using jhbuild, when I want it to do > > out-of-tree builds? > > Making sure that autogen.sh switches to srcdir before modifying it is > enough. > > When writing Makefile.am rules, always remember to include paths > under > top_builddir if you're including a path from top_srcdir; also > remember > that if you're generating files, their source is in srcdir, but their > results are in builddir. If you want JHBuild to build with srcdir ≠ builddir, set checkoutroot, buildroot and prefix to different paths. For example, I have them set to: checkoutroot = '/opt/gnome/source' buildroot = '/opt/gnome/build' prefix = '/opt/gnome/install' https://developer.gnome.org/jhbuild/stable/config-reference.html.en > > 3. What are some recommended macros from autoconf-archive that > > should be > > used? > > This depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve. > > The recommendations are usually for compiler arguments checks and > code > coverage for test suites. Appdata and Yelp have their own macros as > well, but they are not shipped by autoconf-archive. Yeah, I would go with those recommendations too. Basically, the ones we commonly use are the ones listed on https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeCommon/Migration. I also commonly use AX_VALGRIND_CHECK: https://www.gnu.org/software/aut oconf-archive/ax_valgrind_check.html#ax_valgrind_check. > If you want to start assembling an addendum to the Autotools > Mythbuster with the additional practices for GNOME projects, feel > free > to just do it and put it on the wiki. Just ask here for reviews, or > ask in #gnome-hackers on IRC. That would be useful; I’d be happy to help review such an addendum, though I wouldn’t have time to work on it. Philip
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