[GRASS5] Re: OGR-enabled GDAL

[Paul Kelly]

Hello Radim

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Radim Blazek wrote:

> > I see. This is the general problem that there is no mechanism in the 5.1
> > build system for optionally compiling programs, like LOC_OPTIONAL in 5.0.
> > I think it should be a more general solution as there are lots of modules,
> > like this, e.g. that depend on libtiff, libpng, OpenGL etc. and they
> > should all be compiled optionally depending on what the configure script
> > finds.
>
> Why variables from Platform.make cannot be used as conditions in Makefiles
> (like in vector/Makefile and db/drivers/Makefile)?

Maybe---I don't know what is best but it just seems a more elegant
solution to me to do it all within the configure script. I don't
understand it well enough to explain; I just have a feeling about what is
the best way to do it :)

>
> > It looks like the alternative build system (grass/mk) in GRASS 5.0 gives
> > some ideas of how this could be done. It comes down to maintaining the
> > old-style module lists  (src/CMD/lists/GRASS and src/CMD/lists/optional)
> > in 5.1 and the top-level makefile compiling all the modules contained in
> > those lists. Instead of the sub-directory Makefiles containing a list of
> > all the modules like they do now (why was it changed like this when 5.1
> > CVS was set up?).
>
> As I wrote already many times, 51 cvs was created to enable to work together
> on new vectors (when David was here). I did the best I was able to do,
> I used another 'alternative build system' which was available that time.
> I thought that some expert can improve/replace it later, unfortunately nobody
> did anything better.
> So again, I don't insist that current make system should be kept for future.
> Don't hesitate to remove it and do something better!

I always thought it was quite good. I just don't understand it well enough
to know if there was no optional building on purpose. But thinking about
it now I suppose the optional build system was only added to 5.0
when the 5.1 build system was already in operation (this answers the
question). So there would be no harm then in adding the optional build system
to 5.1 as well maybe.

Sometime.

Paul