> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Karwin [mailto:bill@...]
> Sent: Thursday, 27 July 2000 13:13

> > We have a build system ...
>
> I think most people would not be a fan of a homebrew build system unless
> it were open-source, maintained, and easily available.
>

I'd add well documented and supported to the list.

Jan, if you are going to/have to offer this build framework back to the
community then I think autoconf is worth further consideration for the
reasons Bill outlined and because autoconf gives adopters of OS Interbase a
familiar "look and feel" if they are users of other mainstream OSS.

In my experience very few (proportionately) users of OSS on the Win32
platform will actually build it themselves, rather they will want binaries
and ideally an installer. Those who actually want to build the code are (or
will need to become) capable of using tools such as the ones Bill describes
in order to do so.

With the proliferation of Linux distributions and binary install options
(RPM etc) this is becoming the norm on UNIX also.

So the real target audience for a build environment is the OSS developer
community who are going to help with this endeavour. Shouldn't we build on
their efforts and expertise.

I wonder if this was something like the rationale behind dropping
InterBase's proprietary code repository (Marion?) and replacing it with CVS.
Early on in this discussion there was quite a bit of resistance to this idea
if I recall correctly.

M2CW.

Cheers
Adam