I love Ivy and use it a lot, but I agree with Archie, probably CMake +
rpm/deb is going to be much more effective for C/C++ than trying to
build an Ant/Ivy solution.
Alan
On 12/7/2012 7:51 AM, Archie Cobbs wrote:
The C/C++ world does have a de-facto standard for dependency management and
builds. It's called RPM (or .deb, etc.).
For example, check out the openSUSE build service<https://build.opensuse.org/>.
You have a pile of C/C++ code and need to define dependency meta-data? OK,
then create an RPM spec file. The spec file is the analog to your ivy file:
it specifies what dependencies you have when building the code. Once built,
the resulting RPM includes the runtime dependency information. Then deploy
the RPM via zypper which automatically pulls in any other required packages
to satisfy the runtime dependencies. So it's a different "language" but the
overall process and goal is the same as with ivy.
You can use the openSUSE build service online, or download and deploy your
own private version. Or just build your RPMs some other, homebrew way. In
any case, you end up producing an RPM repository containing built versions
of your software, then deploy that software using zypper, etc. Everything
is automated and reproducible.
I have utilized this idea successfully in three separate startups. It works
great.
-Archie
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 9:09 AM, Qazwart <qazw...@gmail.com> wrote:
One of the nice things about Ivy is that it works with your current build
mechanism. You don't have to redo everything from scratch. I see the power
of Maven. However, converting 100 Ant projects into Maven instead of using
Ivy is asking for trouble.
The main issue is that there doesn't seem to be a C share object
repository that Java has. Changing to Maven or Gradle wouldn't solve that
problem, yet it also means completely rewriting your whole build mechanism.
There is either a C/C++ tool that provides access to a worldwide C share
object repository, or there isn't. I don't know how Java as a language
compares to C/C++. I know many C-Heads who turn up their noses at the very
mention of Java (It's not a real language unless you can accidentally
overwrite a buffer!).
However Java is way ahead on build tools, and programming environment.
Continuous Integration is practically non-existent in C-World. How can it
be when it can take hours and dozens of systems to build an application?
The C++ IDE world has no equivalent to Eclipse (unless you count Eclipse).
And, the concept of dependency management doesn't seem to exist.
The best I can imagine is using a combination of Ant and Ivy to download
via <ivy:retrieve> the shared objects from a munged Nexus/Artifactory
server, and tying the whole build process together with Makefiles. I've
seen it work although it seems a bit Rube Goldbergish. (This causes the
bird to peck, turning on the fan, causing the sailboat to float away, and
starting the download of the required C Library from the Nexus Repo…).
After all, the main thing about Maven and Ivy is transitive dependencies.
Is there a Makefile to pom.xml/ivy.xml mechanism?
It's been a while since I've worked in the C/C++ world. Maybe there is
some native tool that can do what Ivy and Maven does. If there is, use
that. There's a certain power with standards, even if you don't fully agree
with them.
--
David Weintraub
da...@weintraub.name
On Dec 7, 2012, at 1:59 AM, Marcel Overdijk <marceloverd...@gmail.com>
wrote:
As we are also looking for alternatives that are a better fit, we are
also
considering Gradle.
Gradle also has an experimental C++ plugin:
http://gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/cpp.html
Something like this in theory it would mean you can use Gradle for both
dependency resolving and building.
I also found a couple of Maven plugins for C/C++ which might also be
interesting:
http://mojo.codehaus.org/maven-native/native-maven-plugin/usage.html
http://java.freehep.org/freehep-nar-plugin/narDependencies.html
