[Mulgara-dev] Build system

[Paul Gearon]

Hi everyone,

I've been having difficulties with the build system again, and I've
been thinking I'd like to see something done about it.

The system we have now was developed back in 2001, and it grew
organically since then. There were two attempts to improve it before
2005 (neither of which improved things adequately), but since then it
has languished.

I'm trying to introduce a new module at the moment, and while it works
fine in Eclipse, and I can even get it to compile in Ant, unrelated
areas of the system start to fail their tests. I have some idea what's
going on here, but the point is that it SHOULDN'T be this hard. Also,
there is no real template of a build.xml for each module, nor is there
any documentation on what's supposed to be happening in these modules.
It makes introducing anything new really tough.

Another reason to look at the build system is the need to integrate
with the SAIL API. At the moment Sesame has to use a custom
modification of Mulgara to work with us. That can't last if we want
people to use this interface (and we do!!!). Unfortunately, I don't
know Maven, so I don't know what's going to be involved in that
particular change.

My main point of concern with this is that it needs to happen soon,
and yet I think it's too big a change between the current beta and the
final 2.0 release. It's also a lot of work with no functional outcome
for users (in particular, anyone funding Mulgara development).
However, I think that working on this would save a lot of pain for any
developers working on Mulgara.

So I'm soliciting thoughts and opinions on this issue. Please offer
some feedback, even if it's just, "don't bother", or "yes, please do
it". (Though, ideally I'd prefer to hear more than that from a FEW
people at least!)

Thanks,
Paul Gearon