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The STLport build system
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This is a basic overview of the STLport build system. At the moment, I'm only familiar 





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with the working of the nmake variant, i.e. for MSVC, eVC and ICC/win32, other variants





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may differ.





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Overview:





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----------





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There are three basic classes to consider while building:





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1. The used make tool (currently that is make (GNU make) an nmake (Microsoft)).





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2. The used compiler





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3. The target type, either application or library





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Other than that, there are three different settings corresponding to the three different 





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STLport modes, 'release', 'debug' and 'STLdebug' and each one has two modes for either





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static or dynamic linking.





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The whole build system lies under the build/ dir of the source tree. There, it first 





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branches to Makefiles/ (which contains the base of the build system) and to lib/ (which 





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contains files to build the STLport library) and test/ (which contains files to build





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tests) (TODO: what is the misc/ folder for?).





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Under Makefiles/, you see the initially mentioned branching according to the build tool.





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Here is also where the configure.bat file puts the generated config.mak file. (TODO:





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what are the other files in that folder?)





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nmake:





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-------





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Under nmake/, you then find the common support files for the different compilers and 





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files that define generic rules. Here, it then splits into app/ and lib/, which are 





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structured similar to each other and to the common nmake/ dir. In each dir you have





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files for the different compilers that are used to make application specific or library





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specific settings.





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The branching in the three STLport modes and the static/dynamic linking is not visible





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in the file structure but only in the used nmake variables.





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In order to make clear which file includes which other file, here an example when 





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compiling the STLport library for eVC4. The call issued is 'nmake /f evc4.mak' in the





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build/lib folder. From there, the following include tree is created:





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build/lib/evc.mak





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  build/Makefiles/config.mak ; generated by configure.bat





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  build/Makefiles/nmake/top.mak





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    build/Makefiles/config.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/sysid.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/sys.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/evc4.mak ; evc4 from config





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        build/Makefiles/nmake/evc-common.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/targetdirs.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/extern.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/targets.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/rules-o.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/clean.mak





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    build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/top.mak ; would be app/top.mak when building an application





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/macro.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/evc4.mak ; evc4 from config





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        build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/evc-common.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/rules-so.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/rules-a.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/rules-install-so.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/rules-install-a.mak





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      build/Makefiles/nmake/lib/clean.mak





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TODO: build/Makefiles/config.mak is included both by build/lib/evc.mak and by 





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build/Makefiles/nmake/top.mak.





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Known issues:





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--------------





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- nmake: MSC doesn't support generating dependency information for makefiles. So, unless





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you modify the direct source file for an object file, no recompilation is triggered! You 





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need to either delete all object files that need to be recompiled or 'make clean'





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- There are targets to only install e.g. the shared STLdebug version but there is no 





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such thing for making clean. This would be useful in the context of above issue for 





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making a selective clean only.