[illumos-Developer] interesting userland project -- non-trivial

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Mon, 2010-08-16 at 11:23 +1200, Ian Collins wrote:
> "Garrett D'Amore"<garrett at damore.org  <http://lists.illumos.org/m/listinfo/developer>>  wrote:
> 
> >/  So one of the tasks that someone who doesn't want to work on kernel
> />/  code, but is interested in a significant bit of userland work would be
> />/  to add the parallel/distributed features of dmake into the vanilla make
> />/  sources we have.
> />/
> />/  We need it to be compatible with Sun dmake, so that we don't have to
> />/  change a zillion lines of Makefile, nor ask other projects to do so.
> 
> Does this imply a move away form the Studio tools?
> 
> dmake may not be open source, but it is a tool we all have and one that wont be going away.
> 
> So long as the makefiles aren't changed so they stop working with the current version, why reinvent the wheel?
> 
> Interpreting the current makefiles is one problem, replicating the distributed features that make dmake so valuable is a much bigger task.
> /
> 

We don't have the source for dmake, so we can't fix bugs in it.  We also
can't port it to other platforms, which make projects involving
portability to other platforms much harder.  (For example, porting to
S/390, ARM, PowerPC, or MIPS. :-)

In fact, having a completely open tool chain is a real goal of the
project.

I would like people to be able to use studio if they want to.  But I
want that to be a choice that the developers or distribution builders
make.  It shouldn't be forced on them because we have no other choices.

	- Garrett