Re: [Doxygen-develop] Problem with default values

[Robert D. <rcd...@gm...>]

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Dimitri van Heesch <do...@gm...> wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> Some things to carry over:
> - options --with-doxywizard, --with-doxyapp, --with-doxysearch --with-sqlite3, --with-libclang, --with-libclang-static
> - checking for flex, bison, perl & python (required for building), bison has to be version 1.35 or higher
> - checking for Qt4 (optional needed for --with-doxywizard)
> - checking for Xapian (optional needed for --with-doxysearch)
> - checking for Sqlite3 (optional needed for --with-sqlite3)
> - checking for libclang (optional needed for --with-libclang)
> (for the current checks and options see the configure script)
> - linking specific libclang/llvm libraries staticly (optional needed for --with-libclang-static)
> - I build ce_parse.cpp and ce_parse.h from constexp.y with proper dependency tracking
> - I create a bunch of .cpp files from .l files (flex), each using their own -p option.
> - I create *_js.h from a bunch of .js files via a sed command (same for other 'resource' files)
> - I post-process the the output of flex with a perl filter before writing it to disk
> - I create configoption.cpp from config.xml via a Python script
> (most of the 'special stuff' can be found in src/libdoxygen.t and src/libdoxycfg.t, to tmake
> config files).
> - a src/settings.h is to be generate with USE_SQLITE3 and USE_LIBCLANG set depending
> on --with-sqlite3 and --with-libclang
> - a src/version.cpp should be generated with the version of doxygen (current stored in the
> configure file, but that could better be another file).

Concerning third party dependencies that you do not build yourself as
part of your make command, would you be able to maintain your own
binaries for these in a repository?

I already have a CMake framework that I can drop into doxygen and use.
To be the most platform agnostic, I have set it up to download
archives of precompiled binaries for third party libraries from an
FTP/HTTP/Windows file share of your choosing (configurable in CMake
cache). Basically for every platform or toolchain you plan to build
doxygen on or with, you will need to have include files + binaries in
an archive. Those will sit in a repository and the CMake scripts will
download them, extract them, and automatically setup include
directories and dependencies for you.

There are a couple of benefits to having this approach:
1. No need to search for these libraries on the system. The CMake
scripts will always be able to guarantee that they are on the  system
since it will be downloading them from a repository you maintain.
2. Easier for new developers to just pick up the code and start
building, since they do not have to spend time building libraries.
3. Windows doesn't have an apt-get (unless you use cygwin, which is
just another dependency to worry about) mechanism, so this makes up
for that and makes it super easy to get a build started on Windows.

The downside, of course, is that this can become a maintenance problem
if you have a ton of libraries and/or platforms or toolchains to
support.

Let me know how you want to approach this, as it will deeply impact
the work. Personally I suggest we take this approach, assuming you can
setup an FTP/HTTP server somewhere to pull down the archives. I will
also post this in the dev mailing list, as I have created a dedicated
thread there for CMake discussion. Join me there!