Re: Developer Guide (in effect)

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <rahal at arabeyes dot org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Salam,

On Tuesday 13 April 2004 23:42, ahmad khalifa wrote:

> what do u mean by going to be released ? do u mean in binary form (.SO and
> .DLL) ?

It means a release in a form of a source tarball (and often binary 
executables/libraries are released in parallel for some systems too, but that 
is not required). It is the snapshot of the CVS at a given time (the time the 
authors decide that their code is distributable, that is :-). The release is 
aimed at the end users, so it's supposed to be well-documented and easy to 
compile and use.

> because i thought that it was released by being on cvs. thats why i think
> it doesnt need any compile script.
>
> i havent thought of the dynamic library stuff. but if its going to get
> released as
> dynamic lib. then a simple makefile should take care of the job. right ?

That's where autotools come in action. You can't distribute the source with a 
'hand-written' makefile (unless you want to make it very big). End users 
don't have the same hardware/software, so autotools check for the user's 
configuration (for ex, the installed compiler, its version etc) and 
automagically builds the makefile ;-)

I hope it answers your questions,

Salam,

- -- 
Youcef R. Rahal
Arabeyes.org
http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAfGdbHDRR6Cd0eSYRAhr9AJ99dSE5xB1TMmPFf9Zca73BbgHZIQCfdSY+
kYWbuZMz7qKlFn648SVRdDM=
=aJrR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----