Merge remote-tracking branch 'mvo/feature/apt-ftparchive-srccache2' into debian/sid

[apt.git] / README.make

diff --git a/README.make b/README.make
index bee2d04c392b3ff32fb30e4d6728d5f6014fe02c..db5f36e9414c43ed009c9d6c1096025c7bb8ae69 100644 (file)
--- a/README.make
+++ b/README.make
@@ -25,23 +25,23 @@ of these parameters will have an immediate effect. The use of makefile.in
 and configure substitutions across build makefiles is not used at all.
 
 Furthermore, the make system runs with a current directory equal to the
-source directory irregardless of the destination directory. This means
-#include "" and #include <> work as epected and more importantly
+source directory regardless of the destination directory. This means
+#include "" and #include <> work as expected and more importantly
 running 'make' in the source directory will work as expected. The
 environment variable or make parameter 'BUILD' sets the build directory.
 It may be an absolute path or a path relative to the top level directory.
-By default build/ will be used with a fall back to ./ This means
-you can get all the advantages of a build directory without having to
+By default build-arch/ then build/ will be used with a fall back to ./ This 
+means you can get all the advantages of a build directory without having to
 cd into it to edit your source code!
 
 The make system also performs dependency generation on the fly as the
 compiler runs. This is extremely fast and accurate. There is however
-one failure condition that occures when a header file is erased. In
+one failure condition that occurs when a header file is erased. In
 this case you should run make clean to purge the .o and .d files to
 rebuild.
 
-The final significant deviation from normal make practicies is 
-in how the build directory is managed. It is not mearly a mirror of
+The final significant deviation from normal make practices is 
+in how the build directory is managed. It is not nearly a mirror of
 the source directory but is logically divided in the following manner
    bin/
      methods/
@@ -49,19 +49,23 @@ the source directory but is logically divided in the following manner
      examples/
    include/
      apt-pkg/
-     deity/
    obj/
      apt-pkg/
-     deity/
-     cmndline/
+     cmdline/
      [...]
 Only .o and .d files are placed in the obj/ subdirectory. The final compiled
 binaries are placed in bin, published headers for inter-component linking
 are placed in include/ and documentation is generated into doc/. This means
-all runnable programs are within the bin/ directory a huge benifit for
+all runnable programs are within the bin/ directory, a huge benefit for
 debugging inter-program relationships. The .so files are also placed in
 bin/ for simplicity.
 
+By default make is put into silent mode. During operation there should be
+no shell or compiler messages only status messages from the makefiles, 
+if any pop up that indicates there may be a problem with your environment.
+For debugging you can disable this by setting NOISY=1, ala
+   make NOISY=1
+
 Using the makefiles
 ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~
 The makefiles for the components are really simple. The complexity is hidden
@@ -76,4 +80,33 @@ directories and other interesting features. They are more completely
 described in the fragment code in buildlib. Some tips on writing fragments
 are included in buildlib/defaults.mak
 
-Jason
+The fragments are NEVER processed by configure, so if you make changes to 
+them they will have an immediate effect.
+
+Autoconf
+~~~~~~~~
+Straight out of CVS you have to initialize autoconf. This requires 
+automake (I really don't know why) and autoconf and requires doing 
+  aclocal -I buildlib
+  autoconf
+[Alternatively you can run make startup in the top level build dir]
+
+Autoconf is configured to do some basic system probes for optional and 
+required functionality and generate an environment.mak and include/config.h 
+from it's findings. It will then write a 'makefile' and run make dirs to 
+create the output directory tree.
+
+It is not my belief that autoconf should be used to generate substantial 
+source code markup to escape OS problems. If an OS problem does crop up 
+it can likely be corrected by installing the correct files into the 
+build include/ dir and perhaps writing some replacement code and 
+linking it in. To the fullest extent possible the source code should conform
+to standards and not cater to broken systems.
+
+Autoconf will also write a makefile into the top level of the build dir, 
+this simply acts as a wrapper to the main top level make in the source tree.
+There is one big warning, you can't use both this make file and the
+ones in the top level tree. Make is not able to resolve rules that 
+go to the same file through different paths and this will confuse the
+depends mechanism. I recommend always using the makefiles in the
+source directory and exporting BUILD.