[Scummvm-devel] Ports and their custom build systems. Do we need them?

[Marcus Comstedt]

Jordi Vilalta <jvprat at jvprat.com> writes:

[...]
> I guess there may be errors in the supported engines table, but for
> example I think several ports are distributing the Igor engine enabled
> by default (which isn't stable yet), and the PS2 had several stable
> engines disabled until a few hours ago.

I don't see what this has to do with using a custom Makefile for
development though.  You don't make a release distribution by tarring
together your development tree.

Isn't it rather that it's difficult to know which engines are enabled
in a release build because it depends on the command line options
given to configure instead of something stored in a file (like a
Makefile for example :) ?


> Another advantage of relying on the main build system is that it will
> help users and other developers to build your ports.

The main build system is there and will help others even if I don't
personally rely on it for my development work.


> And about the simplicity of using a custom Makefile, I think it could
> be enough to replace it by a very small script that calls configure
> with your preferred options. After that you should have the same
> experience.

Well, I'm only speaking for myself here, but to me the "simplicity
of a Makefile" does not mean storing a fixed set of "preferred
options", but rather a vehicle for temporarily changing how things
are built; like switching to a different version of a library or
changing the compilation flags of a single file just to see what
happens.


  // Marcus