RE: Automating builds of multiple packages

[Arjan J. Molenaar]

> From: Tom Tromey [mailto:address@hidden
> >>>>> "Arjan" == Arjan J Molenaar <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> Arjan> Imagine this: I want to build the gnome-libs from
> Arjan> source. Therefore I need GLib, GTK+, Pango and a few other
> Arjan> packages already build and installed. It would be nice
> Arjan> (especially for developers) to make sure GLib is up to date,
> Arjan> GTK+ is up to date, etc. before building gnome-libs (a "make"
> Arjan> in gnome-libs/ would automatically check those packages).
> 
> Arjan> My question is: Is there support for this in
> Arjan> AutoMake/conf/... or a separate tool, or need something like
> Arjan> this to be build?
> 
> Sure, you can do this.  You would simply have the gnome-libs configure
> script check to make sure the correct versions of the libraries it
> requires are installed.
> 
> I imagine the gnome-libs configure script does this already.

Gnome-Libs checks if the correct libraries are installed, that's right. But 
when I change something in, let's say, GTK+ and then rebuild Gnomelibs, 
Gnome-Libs says everything is up to date, but GTK+ has to be rebuild an the 
Gnome-libs has to be build again. You can of course do a `make all && make 
install` for GTK+ and then do a `make all` in GnomeLibs, but I want to avoid 
this "overhead".

I know this is not such a good example, it would be more appropriate if you 
build a library and an application that utilizes that library in parallel: you 
want to do a `make all` (or a make-like program) in the applications source 
directory and make sure it is build with the latest version of your library.

AFAICS this is not a feature of autoconf, but I like to know if I'm wrong.

Regards,

Arjan

> Tom
>