[Java-gnome-developer] Re: java autoconf macros

[Thomas F. <fi...@re...>]

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 12:38, Mark Howard wrote:
> The gnu autoconf-archive has autoconf macros for findings a java
> compiler, jar and javadoc. I've replaced our hacky code with this and
> regenerated aclocal.m4 (and copied the required bits from
> autoconf-archive into our source tree). 
> 
> I've not been able to find a replacement for the AM_PATH_GCJ macro,
> which checks the version of gcj. I have a feeling that this might be
> what's causing the problems with some versions of autoconf, so it would
> be good if we could find a replacement -- it would be great if gcj
> people would create and maintain this.
> 

Hi,

I attempted to build the java-gnome bindings using only gcj on the
weekend, but I eventually gave up.  Here are some comments/questions.

First of all, thanks for doing java-gnome.  Like Mark Wielaard, I think
it's a really important project for free software.

I'm totally ignorant of the build procedures used in the GNOME project,
so bear with me if these questions can be answered by checking GNOME
policy documents.

First question: as stated in the README, the CVS checkout does look
really weird.  But the README doesn't give justification for the
weirdness!  It looks like the .in.in files are an attempt to reuse bits
of configury that are common to the various subpackages.  But when
working with the autotools a more conventional approach is to have
top-level configure.in and Makefile.in files that contain this common
configury, and then have the build recurse into the sub-packages'
directories.  Like I said before, I'm probably ignorant of some GNOME
build-system design decision here -- I'm just suggesting a way to
eliminate some weirdness.

Another question: why not use automake?  For gcj support, automake makes
things much easier.  And the install problems that Mark was seeing will
likely just disappear.

Anyway, I think a lot of configury changes are needed to cleanly support
gcj-only builds, and it's probably not a priority right now, with the
gnome-bindings deadline approaching.  Configury changes can be made
without affecting binary or source compatibility. :)

I hope these suggestions help,
Tom