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Russell,<br>
<br>
I do appreciate what menuselect is trying to do but it is completely
unnecessary with a proper autoconf build process. It makes the asterisk
build process highly unique and requires reliance on yet another piece
of software that must be understood and must compile properly <i><u><b>before</b></u></i>
asterisk can be built. It is one more piece of software that must be
portable across operating systems.<br>
<br>
In addition to having the unique aspects of menuselect as part of the
asterisk build process, autoconf is also used but many of the tests and
subordinate configure/makes are not implemented properly in that
necessary compile flags and loader flags along with configure options
or not flowed down to subordinate configure/make operations which makes
the build process highly non-portable between different OS and for
those of us that need to build to custom libraries, without -g, with
optimization, including certain runtime shared object paths, etc, etc.<br>
<br>
I understand that one or more people put time and effort into
menuselect with the intention of making the build process for asterisk
better but sadly, menuselect simply re-invents the wheel (autoconf)
with a uniquely different approach that anyone building asterisk must
learn and understand. Autoconf has become so widely accepted as the
build process for virtually all open source software that menuselect
really throws a serious wrench into the works for those of us that have
to maintain and deploy a variety of open source packages.<br>
<br>
Yes, there are <i><u><b>plenty</b></u></i> of build bugs in the v1.4
build process, I have only reported a few and I finally got frustrated
by the much larger number that I was faced with after fixing the v1.2
makefiles. Make no mistake - I'm not saying that the v1.2 makefiles
were
satisfactory either. They don't provide any real ability to customize
the build. We do patch the v1.2 makefiles as well to build it. Asterisk
really needs a solid autoconf build process to provide the necessary
options for building on different platforms and directory structures.
The question is whether to spend the time trying to fix the bugs in the
v1.4 build process leaving menuselect in place which would just be lots
of band aids <i><u>or</u></i> spend the time fixing the bugs and
making asterisk v1.4 completely autoconf compliant. You simply can't
have menuselect <i><u><b>and</b></u></i> an autoconf build process -
they conflict with each other. The later approach would risk rejection
and controversy and the former is just a waste of time IMHO and I
suspect many others feel the same way. The result is stagnation as
nobody is making an real effort to fix the build problems and
contribute those fixes back. We have hammered the v1.4 build process
into a condition that works strictly for us and I suspect others have
done similar but due to the ugly and very OS specific nature of most of
our changes they would not be of any value to the community so we have
not contributed them back.<br>
<br>
<br>
Russell Bryant wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid46B0B1B1.1070408@digium.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Kristian Kielhofner wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> I have had the same issues building with AstLinux.
As has been pointed out before menuselect is not friendly for
scripts or Makefiles. I don't understand why we need it at all.
There are already several different ways to build complicated software
on *NIX systems.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Can you please describe what your problems are so that we can fix them?
Let me go over some things that I have said numerous times already:
1) You do *NOT* have to run menuselect in interactive mode. This is
entirely optional. Thus, it should not get in the way of automated builds.
2) It removes *NOTHING* from what we had in Asterisk 1.2. It only adds
features to the build system.
If your problem is that there is an interactive way to customize the
build, but not an extremely easy way to do it from a script, then that
is not a problem. That was never something that was possible. It *is*
possible if you generate the proper menuselect.makeopts file, but that's
aside from the point, really.
If there is a problem where you are having trouble building Asterisk,
then it is much more likely related to our configure script and how we
use its output in the Makefiles. But, I need some details to fix it.
Let's identify the real problems here and make sure we're not
identifying a wishlist item as a serious bug.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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