[webkit-dev] Build system for ports

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Hi Kevin,

On Apr 16, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Kevin Ollivier wrote:
>
> This is what I am going to do with the wx-specific sources. But,  
> and I know this is being a bit picky ;-), I hesitate to put the  
> project files there because platform != port in some cases. e.g.  
> since wx is cross-platform, it may be able to, or need to, use some  
> sources from platform/win, platform/linux, or platform/mac. So I  
> guess I see platform as a mixture of "port" specific and "os"  
> specific sources, and I think it could get confusing as to where to  
> put (or where to find) a port's project files.

We actually have three levels of platform defined.

1) Core operating system dependencies:

PLATFORM(DARWIN) PLATFORM(WIN_OS) PLATFORM(POSIX)

We'll probably add PLATFORM(SYMBIAN) and maybe others at this level.

2) Desktop environment / UI toolkit:

PLATFORM(MAC) PLATFORM(WIN)

We'll probably add PLATFORM(S60), PLATFORM(KDE), PLATFORM(GTK),  
PLATFORM(WX), etc at this level.

3) Graphics API:

PLATFORM(CAIRO) PLATFORM(CG)

If any port wants to use a different graphics API besides these we  
could add PLATFORM(QPAINTER) and so forth as needed.

Ideally, anything that might be needed by a port using a cross- 
platform UI toolkit would be defined as an OS-level platform  
dependency, not a toolkit-level platform dependency.

We haven't fully deployed this scheme yet in WebCore but we are  
working towards it. The platform directory names should match this  
concept of platform.

> Well, in any case, for now I've set things up to put Bakefile- 
> generated projects in WebCore/ports/<PORT> directory. (Perhpas  
> 'projects' would be a better term?) I've also made everything in  
> the Bakefiles relative to SRCDIR, too, so that if we move the  
> project files into another folder, the only change we need to make  
> to the Bakefiles is to make sure that SRCDIR points to the WebCore  
> folder. I should be able to create a patch in a day or two,  
> assuming anonsvn comes back up. :-) I'm going to give Mike a heads- 
> up first to see if what I've done works for him, or if I need to  
> change something first, but once that's done I'll submit it to  
> Bugzilla.
>
> BTW, you might want to consider having a separate project file that  
> generates the cross-platform webcore sources as a static library  
> (say, a "WebCoreBase" project file), and then have the Win32, etc.  
> projects statically link in that library and only build the files  
> specific to their port/platform (and of course, depend on  
> WebCoreBase). Actually, I've pretty much already set up the  
> Bakefile projects this way, so that you can see what I mean when I  
> submit the patch. :-) This way there wouldn't be any redundancy  
> among projects in terms of maintaining the cross-platform sources,  
> and each port will only ever have to worry about updating/ 
> maintaining its own specific files.

Even cross-platform files might get compiled differently for  
different ports - the PLATFORM defines will be different. So I  
wouldn't recommend this. And anyway, the whole thing compiles from  
scratch in only 5 minutes or so on a fast mac or PC so you're not  
saving much.

Regards,
Maciej