[GRASS5] Makefile/autoconf progress! (libs as shared libraries)

[Eric Mitchell]

I once wrote:
> > Also, splitting grass into at least "libs" and "programs"
> > will make this a lot easier, as explicit references to
> > which directories contain which libraries can be dropped,
> > in favor of referring to a single $GISBASE/$ARCH/lib
> > directory.

Or, I can just dump the libs into a common temporary 
directory in the build tree with minimal effort, which 
also works well (added that last night, during a fit 
of insomnia).  This means that tying a makefile 
variable to a library location is no longer necessary.  
This means that you can just say "-lgis" instead of 
"$(GISLIB)".  In and of itself, that's not that big a 
deal, but it also means that if the location of 
libgis.(a|so) moves, you don't have to update the link 
lines for building programs, nor change the definition 
of the library in whichever included makefile it's 
currently defined in.

> > Additional thoughts? concerns? ideas?
> 
> Check out the glib, gtk+, gimp configure procedures.
> They might provide additional inspiration on how to
> modularize the process. Especially check the glib-config 
> and gtk-config programms. :)
>         Bernhard

Or my own esound-config, for that matter. =)  The *-config
technique for dependencies is one that works well with 
autoconf, but requires the programmer of a module know
how to wire it into autoconf, and write the .m4 checks
for it as well.  The gnome-config script is even more 
complex, but handles multiple library requirements fairly
well.  The current makefile setup I'm working with would 
require no such autoconf mastery, provided you ran make 
from within a grass shell.  Obviously, compiling grass
itself would not need to be done from within a shell, but
the "core" grass package can find everything it needs
from $(SRCDIR).  Additional modules can find everything 
they need from $GISBASE.  I'll post a tarball of whatever 
I have available on Friday PM (US time) for comments.

-- ebm
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| Eric B. Mitchell         mailto:emitchell at altaira.com |
| tel: (301) 809 - 3534    Altair Aerospace Corporation |
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