Re: [Adobe-source-devel] Question about building ASL

[Mat M. <mat...@em...>]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Robert Dailey <rcd...@gm...> wrote:
> Hey guys,
> First of all I just want to say that I'm currently in the process of writing
> a Python 3.0 script that will download and build ASL and all of its
> dependencies. There are 2 reasons why I am doing this. First, this is a
> great learning experience for me and will allow me to learn about how ASL is
> built. Secondly, there is no true portable solution to automating the build
> and installation of ASL (There is a batch file for windows and shell script
> for linux, but this is a maintenance burden and still not portable enough).

Thanks for your interest in contributing to ASL. You are correct that
there is currently not portable way to download and build ASL/APL. The
shell scripts for mac/linux/win were cobbled together to give a one
step "build it once" solution for those who only want to try out the
demo applications, or perhaps look over the source code, while
requiring minimal tool support (e.g. tar not even required). The
current solution for developers is somewhat different--developers are
expected to grab sources from perforce, then to issue a command to the
cross-platform boost-build-v2 system.  While it might make sense to
work on the python script you suggest, it would probably be easiest if
you spent some time building using the boost-build files for this
project first.

> Before I get started too deep into this, I want to make sure that the
> documentation for building ASL is up-to-date and fully and accurately
> explains how to build ASL. If there are any instructions that are out of
> date and incorrect, please let me know. Second of all, I need to make sure
> that I can use TBB without any patches. I've already verified that I can use
> Boost without patching it.

 It's good to hear that the bug reports and patches that we submitted
to boost are getting folded in to updated versions of boost.

> I am very opposed to patching third party
> libraries for the sake of ASL.

The only reasons for patching either TBB or boost version were to
correct bugs or compiler errors that were causing those libraries to
fail. The patches were in no way ASL-specific.

> Help is appreciated. Thank you.

Thanks for your interest.