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WHAT IS MK-CONFIGURE?
mk-configure is a lightweight replacement for GNU autotools, written
in and for bmake (portable version of NetBSD make) and UNIX tools
(shell, awk etc.). FreeBSD and OpenBSD make are not good. They are
incompatible with NetBSD bmake. GNU make is not good too.
mk-configure provides a number of include files written in bmake and a
number of standalone programs that should be installed to user's host
for building a software.
mk-configure features:
- An easy way for building standalone executables, static and shared
libraries written in C, C++, Fortran, Pascal and Objective C; .cat
and .html files from man pages; .info pages from texinfo sources
etc. LEX, YACC are also supported. Support for other languages are
planned.
- Installing and uninstalling executables, libraries, scripts,
documentation files and others. DESTDIR support is also provided.
- Integrated autoconf-like support for finding #include files,
libraries and function implementation, function definitions,
defines, types, struct members etc.
- A number of built-in checks for, e.g., system endianness, GNU bison
or GNU flex programs and many others.
- Automatic dependency analysis built-in for C, C++ and Fortran (not
implemented yet, will be available soon).
- Extensibility by writing bmake include files.
- Support for regression tests (see mkc.minitest.mk for the sample).
- mk-configure is small and easy. It is definitely much easier for
use than GNU autotools, many people think that it is also easier
than other competing projects like CMake, scons and others.
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WHAT MK-CONFIGURE IS NOT
- mk-configure is not a replacement for traditional make(1)
- mk-configure is not a silver bullet ;-)
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GOALS OF THE PROJECT
- No code generation! Library approach is used instead. Instead of
generating tons of unreadable blobs mk-configure uses bmake include
files (bmake's libraries) and external executables to make its job.
Developers should distribute source code only, not blobs.
- Single top level command for building a program ("mkcmake").
Instead of running and learning
autoconf/automake/aclocal/autoreconf/config.status/autoheader and
many other tools, and the way they interact with each other, you
should learn only ONE tool, bmake (mkcmake is a trivial wrapper
over bmake).
- No bloat. At this time mk-configure consists of far less than 10000
lines of code (excluding examples and regression tests). Compare
this number with autotools sources and you'll see a difference.
- Simplicity for both developers and users. The only file developers
should be aware of during development is 'Makefile'. Users just
run 'env <options> mkcmake all <options>' to build a software. The
same for developers -- for building a software, just run 'mkcmake'.
- Portability. At the moment the following systems and compilers are
supported:
- NetBSD. Tested on NetBSD-5.0/x86 and NetBSD-2.0/alpha and later
versions with gcc, pcc and clang.
- FreeBSD. Tested on FreeBSD-6.2/x86, 7.1/spark64, 7.1/x86 and
later versions with gcc.
- OpenBSD. Tested on OpenBSD-3.8/x86, 4.5/x86 and later versions
with gcc.
- DragonFlyBSD. Tested on DragonFly-2.4.1-RELEASE/x86 and later
versions with gcc.
- MirOS BSD. Tested on MirBSD-10/x86 and later versions with gcc.
- Linux. Tested on Linux/{x86,x86-64} with gcc, icc and SunStudio.
- Solaris. Tested on Solaris-{10,11}/x86 and Solaris-10/spark64
with SunStudio-11, SunStudio-12 and gcc.
- Darwin (MacOS-X). Tested on Darwin-8.11.0/ppc (MacOS-X Tiger)
and later version with native gcc and clang.
- Interix. Tested on Interix-3.5/x86 with gcc.
- QNX. Tested on QNX-6.3/x86 with gcc.
- OSF1. Tested on Tru64-5.1/alpha with gcc and DEC C compiler.
- HP-UX. Tested on HP-UX-11.0/hppa with gcc.
- Partial support for AIX and their native
compilers. Support is not complete because I have no access to
"big iron" :-( .
If you don't see your favorite system/compiler here and want to
help me to improve mk-configure, feel free to contact me.
mk-configure needs your help! ;-)
- Declarative approach in writing Makefiles. Instead of specifying
_HOW_ to build your software, you should specify source files,
files to build and (optionally) build options, e.g. LDCOMPILER=yes
meaning that ${CC} or ${C++} compiler should be used as a linker
instead of ${LD}. Small/medium size projects may have no rules in
Makefiles at all. Most useful things are already implemented in
mk-configure include files including implementation for targets
all, install, uninstall as well as support for building the shared
libraries, installation to ${DESTDIR} etc. Usually, Makefile contain
only variable assignments, .include-s and .if/.for directives.
- No heavy dependencies like Python or Perl.
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HOW TO USE MK-CONFIGURE?
Developers:
- Install bmake (and optionally sys.mk) to your system.
- Install mk-configure to your system.
- Develop your software using bmake and mkc.*.mk include files
provided by mk-configure.
- Run 'mkcmake' or 'mkcmake all' for building your program.
(mkcmake is a trivial wrapper over bmake).
You don't need autoconf/autoheader/automake/aclocal/config.guess/
/autoreconf/config.status/config.sub and blah-blah-blah
BMAKE is magic enough ;-)
Users and software packagers:
- Install bmake (and optionally sys.mk) to your system.
- Install mk-configure to your system.
- Run mkcmake for building a software and pass to it
the building options, e.g.
env CC=pcc CFLAGS='-O0 -g' PREFIX=/opt/software \
mkcmake all install
There is no need for "configure" script and analogs.
BMAKE is magic enough ;-)
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WHAT'S WRONG WITH GNU AUTOTOOLS (IN SHORT)?
1) Autotools are toooooo big and toooooo complex. I fear most free
and open source developers do not understand how to use autotools
in a proper way to make software REALLY portable.
2) configure script generated by autoconf is too big. Trivial
configure.ac results in hundreds of kilobytes of unreadable textual
blobs. What the hell?
3) The goal of autotools was to make building software easier. But
this goal makes development painful. Autotools is a hell for
development/developers. Too much of top-level commands: automake,
autoconf, aclocal, autoheader... All its functionality can be
implemented using one top-level command -- mkcmake. Autotools is
also a well known source of headaches for users and software
packagers.
4) In theory, configure script generated by autoconf is portable
because it is written in portable shell. In practice this is not
always true. Users often need to update autoconf for regenerating
an upstream configure scripts. They also often need to patch a
configure and Makefile blobs.
5) autoconf doesn't support efficient results caching from different
projects. In theory this can make building thousands of projects
(e.g. software packages in OS distributions) dramatically faster.
6) "configure" script generated by autoconf are too slow even on
modern hardware and systems having fast fork(2) system call
(notably *BSD and Linux).
7) Many (most?) real-life configure.ac break the cross-compiling.
8) In my view autotools (automake and autoconf) are BADLY designed.
Personally, I dislike code generation for software build because it
is extremely ugly approach even if the generated code is claimed to
be "portable". Nowadays it is not a problem to install any kind of
software building tools and use them more efficiently.
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WHAT MK-CONFIGURE CONSISTS OF?
- mkc.{files,lib,prog,subprj,subdir}.mk files.
These include files are responsible for building, installing and
uninstalling applications, static and shared libraries, scripts,
text files, man and info pages, hard and soft links etc...
NOTE FOR *BSD USERS: unlike well known Mk files from *BSD
systems mkc.*.mk files provide the following features (this list
is not complete, see mk-configure.7 for details).
- PREFIX, BINDIR, MANDIR etc. variables default to directories
under /usr/local. By default the same variables in bsd.*.mk
files are set to directories under /usr. The reason is that they
are used mainly for maintaining *BSD's own code while
mk-configure is targeted to all UNIX-like systems, not only *BSD.
- BINOWN, BINGRP, MANOWN etc. variables are set to 'id -u' and
'id -g' if mkcmake(1) is run under an unprivileged user.
By default bsd.*.mk use root:wheel by default.
- A target 'install' installs include files, info pages and
others not installed by default by bsd.*.mk files.
It also creates target directories by default
(see target 'installdirs' and MKINSTALLDIRS variable).
- A target 'installdirs' creates all required destination
directories. bsd.*.mk files do not create them at all.
- A target 'uninstall' removes all installed files from
destination directories. bsd.*.mk files do not provide
this functionality.
- A target 'test' of mkc.subdir.mk (by default) runs a "test"
target for each subdirectory listed in SUBDIR. Other mkc.*.mk
files provide "test" target too but does nothing by default.
If you want to test your application, define your own "test"
target in application's Makefile.
- DPLIBDIRS variable, if set, contains a list of directories of
the libraries your project depends on. If this variable is
set, LDFLAGS is modified accordingly. See examples/ projects.
- "cleandir" and "distclean" targets that remove all temporary
files and mk-configure.mk's cache files.
- support for texinfo/info files. There is no need to .include
a special include files such as <bsd.info.mk> file.
- mkc.subprj.mk is a powerful replacement
for traditional bsd.subdir.mk.
- Tons of other additions and improvements.
- mkc.intexts.in
Given a list of files in INFILES or INSCRIPTS mkc.intexts.mk
generates them from appropriate *.in file replacing @prefix@,
@sysconfdir@, @libdir@, @bindir@, @sbindir@, @datadir@ etc. with
real ${PREFIX}, ${SYSCONFDIR} etc. See examples/ subdirectory for
the samples.
- mkc.configure.mk is a replacement for GNU autoconf. Its
functionality is large enough to describe here. In short, it allows
to check for presence of header files, function or variable
declarations, presence of function in a particular library, defines,
sizeof of data types and other useful things. Read the documentation
in mk-configure.7 and see examples/ subdirectory for the samples of
use.
- Standalone full-functional
mkc_check_{funclib,header,sizeof,decl,prog,custom,compiler} and
other programs that can be used without mkcmake and without mkc.*.mk
files. Read appropriate man pages.
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DOCUMENTATION:
- Presentation about mk-configure (basic ideas and simple samples of use).
See INSTALLATION section for build instructions.
- Instead of screenshots :-) I've prepared a lot of examples under
examples/ subdirectory.
- Documentation for mk include files is in mk-configure(7).
- doc/NOTES contains a number of useful recipes.
- Most programs (mkc_check_{decl,header,funclib,sizeof,prog,custom})
have -h option and manual pages.
- Read the FAQ document. It may be helpful.
- Real life projects based on mk-configure:
- Most of my projects use mk-configure.
https://github.com/cheusov
- AWK interpreter from NetBSD cvs tree,
ported to Darwin, Solaris, Linux and other BSD.
http://mova.org/~cheusov/pub/mk-configure/nbawk/
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IS MK-CONFIGURE STABLE?
Basic functionality of "mk-configure" is stable
but it is not feature-complete yet, see TODO file for details.
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INSTALLATION:
1) Install bmake(1).
Sources are available here.
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/sjg/
http://www.crufty.net/help/sjg/bmake.html
NOTE: Some versions of bmake (shipped with NetBSD-5.1, for
example) contains bugs which are critical for mk-configure.
Please make sure you install stable version of bmake and
'bmake test' succeeds (see section 3 below).
2) Install NetBSD version of mkdep(1).
Sources are available here.
https://code.google.com/p/bmkdep/
Traditional BSD mkdep(1) is also good but NetBSD version is just better.
3) Download mk-configure source from either
http://mova.org/~cheusov/pub/mk-configure or
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mk-configure and unpack tarball.
# cd mk-configure-X.Y.Z/
# export PREFIX=/usr/local (the default)
or
# export PREFIX=/usr SYSCONFDIR=/etc
# emacs sys.mk # if needed
# bmake all
Of course, you can change PREFIX, SYSCONFDIR, BINDIR etc.
to whatever you want. PREFIX defaults to /usr/local.
4)
# bmake test # For testing mk-configure, this step is optional.
# Note that testing requires lex(1), yacc(1),
# pkg-config(1), glib2 library and other things
# that are not mandatory for using mk-configure
# and may be not available on your system.
# If "bmake test" fails on your platform, please let
# me know. If for some reason you want to exclude some
# regression tests (they are in "tests" and "examples"
# subdirectories), you may list them in NOSUBDIR variable,
# e.g.
# NOSUBDIR='hello_glib2 hello_lua lua_dirs' bmake test
5)
# bmake install
or
# env DESTDIR=/tmp/temproot bmake install
6) You can also build a simple presentation by running either of the
following commands:
bmake all-presentation
NOTE: I'd recommend to use the latest stable version of bmake. Old
bmake may not work, e.g., /usr/bin/make shipped with NetBSD-2.0 is
not supported. pmake-1.111 (an ancient version of NetBSD make)
found in some Linux distributions does't work too.
NOTE: In order to work properly bmake needs sys.mk file that defines
default variable values and suffix rules. mk-configure doesn't
need it, but bmake always tries to load this file. The problem
is that different Mk-files libraries may conflict due to common
sys.mk. This is why mk-c's own mk files are installed to its own
directory (${PREFIX}/share/mkc-mk by default) and the same for
empty sys.mk file.
6) Usage
For use of mk-configure for real-life development you may need the
following programs: C/C++/Fortran/Pascal/Objective-C compilers,
linker, yacc/bison, lex/flex, ar, as, ln, nroff, pod2man,
pod2html, ranlib, mkdep, tar, gzip, bzip2, cpp, install, lorder,
nm, tsort, pkg-config, zip and others. Of course you'll
need awk, sed, grep and some other POSIX tools too.
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MK-CONFIGURE BINARY PACKAGE
Binary packages for mk-configure are available in the following systems:
- NetBSD pkgsrc (devel/mk-configure).
- FreeBSD ports (devel/mk-configure)
- Debian/Ubuntu Linux (mk-configure)
- AltLinux (mk-configure)
- RHEL (mk-configure in repoforge repository)
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FEEDBACK
Send all your suggestions, bug reports etc.
to Aleksey Cheusov <vle@gmx.net> or register them at project's site
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mk-configure/
For free e-mail subscription for mk-configure releases, visit
http://freshmeat.net/projects/mk-configure/
page.
For pull requests, use github
http://github.com/cheusov/mk-configure/
Feel free to notify me about spelling errors in the documentation.
English is not my first language.
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