Once Csound 5 is out of alpha, Csound users (not developers) will not need
to build Csound, only install it.

New Csound 5 developers need to go through a more complex process simply
because Csound 5 has more external dependencies than the earlier version,
in order to simplify the internals of Csound. 

The same complexities (and more) appeared in the GNU build system that I
originally created for Csound 5 -- except that build system never really
worked at all, while scons does work.

In addition to scons actually working, it runs much faster than the GNU
system, especially on Cygwin.

In other words, scons should actually help with new Csound 5 developers,
not suffer in comparison with the GNU build system.

I have no doubt the Csound 5 scons build system could be improved. It does
have some problems.

Some of the external dependencies in Csound 5 are required (such as
libsndfile) and others are optional. scons does allow for options and scons
-h will print the list.


Original Message:
-----------------
From:  ramsdell@mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell)
Date: 28 Jul 2004 15:17:58 -0400
To: csound-dev@eartha.mills.edu, ramsdell@mitre.org
Subject: [CSOUND-DEV:5111] Csound 4.23f12.2 released and Csound 5
installation


I released Csound 4.23f12gbs.2, which simply no longer builds shared
libraries by default.  Hopefully, builds on older versions of Linux
will now succeed.

The reason I contributed the sources required to construct a GNU Build
System for Csound 4 was to automate the task of building and
installing Csound on a wide range of platforms.  Of course, as we
know, the GBS-based system still has problems on some versions Linux,
and the last time I checked, the build fails on Solaris 9 too.

This afternoon, I turned my focus to Csound 5, and read the
installation guide.  The instructions suggest to me that the
installation process required the current for version of Csound 5 is
quite complex.  There are several packages that must be installed, and
once they have been put in place, platform specific instructions for
Csound 5 itself.

The GBS-based Csound has the property that additional packages are
optional.  If FLTK is not present, it configures itself to create a
system that omits the FLTK enhancements, otherwise, it automatically
includes them.  On all systems, the commands:

    $ ./configure
    $ make

will do something reasonable.  It's something that newbies can handle,
as Adam, our Mandrake user attests.  I am very concerned that the
SCons based system I just read about will make Csound 5 installation
into an obstacle to its acceptance.

John


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"gogins@pipeline.com"  writes:

> New Csound 5 developers need to go through a more complex process simply
> because Csound 5 has more external dependencies than the earlier version,
> in order to simplify the internals of Csound. 

I see.

> The same complexities (and more) appeared in the GNU build system that I
> originally created for Csound 5 -- except that build system never really
> worked at all, while scons does work.

Okay.

> In addition to scons actually working, it runs much faster than the GNU
> system, especially on Cygwin.

Yes, the Cygwin GBS system build is much slower that a Linux build on
the same machine.

> In other words, scons should actually help with new Csound 5
> developers, not suffer in comparison with the GNU build system.

I should have not made my point as an SCons vs. GBS issue.  I meant to
make it an automated vs. manual issue.  In any event, I gather that
the build process has become more manual because of the simplification
of the internal structure.  That seems a little counterintuitive, but
I'll take you word for it.

John