Re: sources/Build.exe alternate source file location question

From: Ray Trent (rat_at_synaptics.com.spamblock)
Date: 05/28/04 

Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 13:55:41 -0700

Mark Roddy wrote:
> I give up, what do 'compiling things as libraries' and having 'a dedicated
> build team' have to do with each other?

Setting this up is a hassle that has nothing to do with actual coding.
It's not a trivial thing to do with BUILD either, unless you're already
a build engineer that understands it well enough that you don't have to
do computer science to figure it out every time :-).

To be fair, the documentation's much better these days than it was when
we developed our build process (back in the NT4 days when it was
basically completely undocumented). Every time you want to change
something, yet more management of the build process becomes necessary.
All of this overhead is something that some companies deal with using a
dedicated build team.

> So for NT style builds you just create program libraries for your two share
> directories and link against them. For other build environments you can
> either compile the individual source modules or also use libraries.

Yes, well, there are also shared header files, which can't be compiled
into libraries at all... Yes, it's possible to hardcode the paths or put
them all in a big pile somewhere and point to that pile, but again, it's
a pain to manage, and not very well organized.

> Generally there are better ways to share source code modules than to try to
> force all platform build environments to fit into one common build system.
> For example: use a good source code management system, partition your common
> code base out as a separate module under your SCMS, and share it out of the
> SCMS into each platform specific build system in the manner best suited to
> that system.

Ok, that's great, but many people don't want to pay for and train up on
that kind of SCMS, and prefer to use something like CVS. Also again,
managing something like this takes time that could usually be better
spent on writing code and fixing bugs. 

--
../ray\..