fenics team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 08:40:35AM -0800, Theodore Omtzigt wrote:
> Point taken. I will look at the GTK build process and see how they do native
> Windows builds and hope to learn how they solve this problem of having one
> build process for both Linux and Windows.
> 
> Personally, I like the build process to be explicit so that I can quickly
> get a sense how the software is build, by whom, and for what reason. For any
> size library or application this implies that the source is organized so
> that it simplifies the build process. However, I see your problem with
> mixing two complex libraries and somehow making it work. I haven't been part
> of an organization where build process wasn't an issue, and it is always a
> problem of divergent requirements. I would love to build this stuff natively
> on Windows, so I am biased in the Windows direction. I figured I notch you a
> bit now since it would be easier to fix early in the process instead of two
> years from now when the environment is 200k LOC.
> 
> Another cool idea is to start using automated build systems like Cruise
> Control, a bug tracker like JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/)
> and a Wiki like Confluence (http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence).
> This is all stuff I can do for FEniCS since I can't do squad yet on the FEA
> side and you guys shouldn't be side tracked by this peripheral stuff.

Matt Knepley has a new Python-based build system called BuildSystem
which is used by PETSc. I have promised that I will try it out some
day (when I find the time and documentation).

Until then, DOLFIN uses autotools which works pretty well (for DOLFIN)
and is GNU standard.

/Anders