autotoolizing xen?

autotoolizing xen?

[Tobias Hunger]

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Hi there!
 
I was wondering what the general opinion on autotoolizing xen is? I am 
volunteering to do so, if there is interest in updating the build system to 
use autoconf, automake and/or libtool.

Is one configure script for all of xen enough or do you want to be able to 
configure all/some tools separately? I know that Anthony is no fan of 
libtool... are there more reservations about some (or all:-) of the 
autotools?

-- 
Gruss,
Tobias

------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
tobias@aquazul.com                     So I installed Linux.
------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Tobias Hunger wrote:

> I was wondering what the general opinion on autotoolizing xen is? I am
> volunteering to do so, if there is interest in updating the build system
> to use autoconf, automake and/or libtool.

oh, please don't do this. I do not like those things at all. 

Just my $.02

ron


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X86_64 status?

[Alvin Starr]

What is the current state of the x86_64 port?

On another note. I am sure it is a silly question but is anybody wacking 
away on an Alpha port?

-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   voice: (416)585-9971
Interlink Connectivity        ||   fax:   (416)585-9974
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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Tobias Hunger]

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On Friday 18 February 2005 16:15, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> oh, please don't do this. I do not like those things at all.

Oh, neither do I, but having to set variables in Makefiles or setting them 
each time when calling make is even worse.

As xen keeps acquiring more and more dependencies (c++ for libio, some lib for 
persistent storage of settings might get added soon), different toolsets 
(xend and/or vm-tools if that makes it into the repository), 32 and 64 bit 
architectures, vanderbuild support,  more guest OSes, etc., the need for 
configuration will not be reduced. Plus the autotools work reasonably well, 
are fairly widely used and installed and packagers should have less trouble 
with a standard configure --with-some-options && make && make 
DESTDIR=/somewhere install than with the current system.

Feel free to suggest better alternatives, I am more than willing to look into 
others. So far I just have not found anything that worked better without 
giving up lots of flexibility that I occasionally end up needing and works 
everywhere I want to use it. OK, xen is somewhat Linux-centric at the moment, 
but other dom0-OSes are possible.

-- 
Gruss,
Tobias

------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
tobias@aquazul.com                     So I installed Linux.
------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Anthony Liguori]

Ronald G. Minnich wrote:

>oh, please don't do this. I do not like those things at all. 
>  
>
Right now, xen-unstable doesn't build if you don't have Xlibs 
installed.  This is because of ioemu.  ioemu is not required to run Xen 
on a non-VT system.

We definitely need a smarter build system that can figure out "hey, I 
don't have xlib, so don't build ioemu."

autoconf does that for you.  I think the intention is just to 
autoconfize the tools/ directory.  You get all sorts of good things for 
free (cross-compilation support, separate build/src directories, etc.).

I think it's fair to not use tools we don't want (libtool, automake 
maybe) but it seems to make sense to at least use autoconf.

Regards,
Anthony Liguori

>Just my $.02
>
>ron
>
>
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>  
>



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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Christian Limpach]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:53:00 +0100, Tobias Hunger <tobias@aquazul.com> wrote:
> As xen keeps acquiring more and more dependencies ...
> ... vanderbuild support

what is vanderbuild support?

     christian


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Tobias Hunger]

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On Friday 18 February 2005 17:03, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> autoconf does that for you.  I think the intention is just to
> autoconfize the tools/ directory.  You get all sorts of good things for
> free (cross-compilation support, separate build/src directories, etc.).

Oh, I wouldn't mind sticking the configure script into the root xen dir. I'd 
love to do a configure --with-kernels="linux-2.6-xen0 linux-2.6-xen1" 
--with-custom-kernel-builddir=../my_xen_stuff or something similar.

But you are right: I am concerned about the tools. Not even I do not see the 
need to autotoolize the guestkernels and the xen hypervisor does not benefit 
much from a configure script at this point. The later might change in time 
though.

As I said: I am not stuck on using the autotools, but they seem to be the best 
solution to this problem at the moment.

-- 
Gruss,
Tobias

------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
tobias@aquazul.com                     So I installed Linux.
------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Nivedita Singhvi]

Christian Limpach wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:53:00 +0100, Tobias Hunger <tobias@aquazul.com> wrote:
> 
>>As xen keeps acquiring more and more dependencies ...
>>... vanderbuild support
> 
> 
> what is vanderbuild support?

Er, I think what was being referred to was:


http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/index.htm

There is a link to the spec off that page..

thanks,
Nivedita


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Jacob Gorm Hansen]

Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Tobias Hunger wrote:
> 
> 
>>I was wondering what the general opinion on autotoolizing xen is? I am
>>volunteering to do so, if there is interest in updating the build system
>>to use autoconf, automake and/or libtool.
> 
> 
> oh, please don't do this. I do not like those things at all. 

I agree, please do not go down that road. Look at 'GNU helloworld' for 
an (extreme) example of how horibbly bloated this will make your 
software. On my Gentoo box the configure scripts often take longer to 
run than the actual build of the software itself.

Instead, use a better build system. I am using Jam (which is public 
domain) for my stuff, and that works perfectly, and the build 
specifications are a lot simpler that the xen Makefiles.

For example, here is my Jamfile for tools/libxc:

--------------------------------------------
SubDir TOP tools libxc  ;

SubDirHdrs $(TOP) tools libxutil ;

Library libxc :
xc_atropos.c
xc_bvtsched.c
xc_domain.c
xc_evtchn.c
xc_io.c
xc_linux_build.c
xc_linux_restore.c
xc_linux_save.c
xc_misc.c
xc_physdev.c
xc_plan9_build.c
xc_private.c
xc_rrobin.c
;
--------------------------------------------

Contrast that with corresponding Makefile, and you will see how much 
simpler the Jamfile is. Jam also handles all the tedious stuff like 
header-dependencies without littering your tree with .dep files, and 
having it output target files to a separate build-directory (which once 
you've tried it you will never want to live without, saves you a lot of 
'make clean's) is trivial, just set a single variable at the top level.

Some really big commercial code bases use Jam. If you look at the 
'Jamming' mailing list archives you will find build-masters from very 
well known software companies on there. Personally I have used it to 
build a game which retailed more than 3 million copies, on four very 
different platforms.

Jacob


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Adam Sulmicki]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Tobias Hunger wrote:
>
>> I was wondering what the general opinion on autotoolizing xen is? I am
>> volunteering to do so, if there is interest in updating the build system
>> to use autoconf, automake and/or libtool.
>
> oh, please don't do this. I do not like those things at all.

Imakefile ? :-)

/me ducks and runs


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Jacob Gorm Hansen]

Anthony Liguori wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 13:20, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> 
>>Instead, use a better build system. I am using Jam (which is public 
>>domain) for my stuff, and that works perfectly, and the build 
>>specifications are a lot simpler that the xen Makefiles.
> 
> 
> I've used Jam before with Boost.  It can get quite nasty (if you try to
> be portable and include a version of Jam, you've got a nasty chicken and
> the egg problem).

Most of the major distros (at least debian and gentoo) now come with jam 
binaries, so that is not as much of a problem today, but the Jam source 
is very small and it would not be impossible to include it as part of 
the source tree.

Anyway, I did a fairly thorough investigation of the whole build-system 
scene a few years ago, and back then my conclusion was that while Jam is 
not perfect, it is lightyears ahead of make in speed and portability 
(make will basically not work on a non-unix box, because all Makefiles 
tend to rely heavily on tools such as sed and awk), and is both faster 
and easier to use than other make replacements such as Ant and SCons.

The linux 2.6 build system is also an option. At least it seems a lot 
better than the 2.4 version.

I agree that not being able to build Xen without having xlibs is kind of 
silly. When I emerged twisted it ended up dragging in freetype and most 
of Gnome as well! But maybe the solution is to just not include ioemu in 
the Xen tree until such dependencies are cleaned up, rather than trying 
to fix the problem in the build system.

Jacob


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Anthony Liguori]

On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 13:20, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> Instead, use a better build system. I am using Jam (which is public 
> domain) for my stuff, and that works perfectly, and the build 
> specifications are a lot simpler that the xen Makefiles.

I've used Jam before with Boost.  It can get quite nasty (if you try to
be portable and include a version of Jam, you've got a nasty chicken and
the egg problem).

autotools have their problems, but used properly, they are worth their
weight in gold.  That often means only using autoconf.  Once Xen starts
supporting different types of operating systems with their tools, and
you have to start dealing with broken versions of things autoconf is
extraordinarily useful.

There is a reason so many large, highly portable, Open Source projects
use autoconf.

-- 
Anthony Liguori
Linux Technology Center (LTC) - IBM Austin
E-mail: aliguori@us.ibm.com
Phone: (512) 838-1208




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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Tobias Hunger]

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On Friday 18 February 2005 20:20, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> Instead, use a better build system. I am using Jam (which is public
> domain) for my stuff, and that works perfectly, and the build
> specifications are a lot simpler that the xen Makefiles.

Can Jam build shared libs nowadays? It was not able to when I last checked (or 
at least that was what was claimed on the mailinglist). That was the main 
reason not to use it back then. That was a while back, but I found jam to be 
horrible at that time... that there are several incompatible flavors of jam 
was a nasty surprise as well. Including the jam sources (which build system 
should you use to build it?) in my projects was never an option: I want my 
code in my repositories, not that of a buildsystem.

> For example, here is my Jamfile for tools/libxc:

A automake file is no more complex. A makefile is horrible to maintain, I 
agree with you there.

> Jam also handles all the tedious stuff like
> header-dependencies without littering your tree with .dep files, and
> having it output target files to a separate build-directory (which once
> you've tried it you will never want to live without, saves you a lot of
> 'make clean's) is trivial, just set a single variable at the top level.

Well, I did not like it too much when I tried it.

-- 
Gruss,
Tobias

------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
tobias@aquazul.com                     So I installed Linux.
------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Keir Fraser]

> Hi there!
>  
> I was wondering what the general opinion on autotoolizing xen is? I am 
> volunteering to do so, if there is interest in updating the build system to 
> use autoconf, automake and/or libtool.
> 
> Is one configure script for all of xen enough or do you want to be able to 
> configure all/some tools separately? I know that Anthony is no fan of 
> libtool... are there more reservations about some (or all:-) of the 
> autotools?

Autotooling the tools subdirectory would probably make sense, if that
could be done with few or no changes outside that subdirectory. Not
sure what you would do if you do a 'make dist' from the root Makefile
--- perhaps check for existence of tools/Makefile and run
tools/configure if it doesn't exist?

We could have the confiugure script at the root of the repository if
it wouldn't make things there more complicated.

 -- Keir


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Re: autotoolizing xen?

[Nick Craig-Wood]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 12:03:12PM -0800, Jacob Gorm Hansen wrote:
> Anyway, I did a fairly thorough investigation of the whole build-system 
> scene a few years ago, and back then my conclusion was that while Jam is 
> not perfect, it is lightyears ahead of make in speed and portability 
> (make will basically not work on a non-unix box, because all Makefiles 
> tend to rely heavily on tools such as sed and awk), and is both faster 
> and easier to use than other make replacements such as Ant and SCons.

I've been doing a similar analysis for our large cross platform C++
program recently.

Jam looks interesting.  Ant - who'd want to write XML files to build
stuff!  SCons looks particularly interesting as you can include
arbitrary Python code.  Since Python is our scripting language of
choice it makes perfect sense.  And may do so for the Xen developer
community too.

My guess is that Xen sticks with make though - the devil you know etc
;-)

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick@craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick


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