Re: [upnp-sdk-dev] undocumented changes

[John D. <jd...@re...>]

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 09:40 +0200, qx...@gm... wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I played around a little bit with automake on Solaris and found a big  
> issue: the library created with autoconf/automake has a size of more than  
> 1,3 MByte, when I compile it using the same levels of optimization using a  
> plain Makefile it goes down to about 140 KBytes.
> 
> Currently I don't know what the reason is but I'd suggest that I provide a  
> specific Makefile for Solaris. Beside the fact that it solves that  
> sizing-problem using this it is fairly easy to modify it for the usage  
> with the Sun-compiler that can't be used with autoconf/automake (AFAIK). I  
> think at least for a Windows-port non-automake-compatible makefiles are  
> necessary so why don't starting with it here?

Hi Michael:

Some questions:

* There are many makefiles spread out through the directory tree, are
you planning on overriding just one or are you providing replacements
for every makefile?

* The autotools are used extensively on every unix like platform,
Solaris included. Libtool, pkgconfig etc. were developed expressly to
address the issues of multi-platform building so that platform specific
build issues are hidden from users. Solaris is a major platform with
with a lot of open source code built for it. I don't know what the
specific problem is you're encountering but given the pervasive presence
of autotool built components on solaris it seem much more likely there
is a small local problem with the autotool usage by libupnp which needs
to be fixed rather than the autotool model is broken. I'm concerned if
we introduce platform specific makefiles in scattered directories we'll
be regressing significantly and introduce a lot of confusion over how
tho build which can be avoided.

* With respect to windows, it really depends on what environment you're
building for. autotools works just fine in a cygnus environment and
probably MKS as well. If you want to work in Microsoft's environment
then why not use the Microsoft native UPnP libraries? That's what I did
when I developed UPnP support which was both linux and windows. Given
autotools works in a unix like enviroment in Windows and one has the
choice to use native UPnP support on windows I'm not sure that's an
argument to throw out autotools in the SDK. Also for what its worth the
project is called "UPnP SDK for Linux". While it would be nice for it to
build on windows (which it will in a cygnus environment), I'm not sure
the porting effort for native windows is worth it given the existing
native UPnP support.

I appreciate with heart felt sympathy any frustration you're having with
the autotool stuff, it can be frustrating, I know all too well. But
after getting over a few humps you'll see it's benefits are tremendous.
Let's try and find a fix to your problem.

Did you compare the arguments passed to the compiler and linker with
your makefile and the makefile generated by automake? Can you identify
an a build option responsible for the large library size? By any chance
is debugging on?
-- 
John Dennis <jd...@re...>
Red Hat Inc.