[Brlcad-tracker] [Task #114538] Build containment and flexibility

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Task #114538 has been updated. 

Project: BRL-CAD
Subproject: TODO
Summary: Build containment and flexibility
Complete: 85%
Status: Open
Authority  : brlcad
Assigned to: brlcad

Description: The BRL-CAD build methodology has always been to be completely self-contained when it comes to providing functionality and compiling on foreign systems.  That is to say that users should never need to be told that they have to go get some external library for any of the core features of BRL-CAD.  It's either bundled in (like libpng, tcl/tk, etc) or the build feature is automatically disabled and alternative interfaces exist.  Example, I might not be on a system that supports Open GL, so the framebuffer and display manager support for ogl should be automatically disabled.

With the new build system, we lost a large portion of this containment.  In all fairness, it's a lot of additional logic to add and it was simply hard-coded expert knowledge embedded into the cake-based build system (i.e. little flexibility).  So the build system needs to be "brought up to spec", restore build containment and hopefully be flexible as well in the process.

Much of this work has already been underway for several months now and is an on-going effort until it's "done".  That said, some of the known areas left to be contained include terminal capabilities (termcap/termlib/curses), X11 support, OpenGL X11 support, and OpenGL Windows support.  The latter three are framebuffer and display manager options.

Flexibility has already (recently) been added for configure-time selection/detection of tcl/tk, itcl/itk, iwidgets, URT, libpng, zlib, and regex support.  It's worth noting that each of these takes/took a respectible amount of time (several hours each) due to the nature of platform variability and a need to work across all the core platforms.

Follow-Ups:

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Date: 2005-04-26 17:25
By: brlcad

Comment:
Terminal capabilities (termlib/termcap/curses) are now  configured in CVS.

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For more info, visit:

http://sourceforge.net/pm/task.php?func=detailtask&project_task_id=114538&group_id=105292&group_project_id=35563