Incorportate a build configuration system.

[spwilson2]

To consider:

• SCons
• CMake
• kconfig (Would need to port from linux kernel or find an existing port)
• roll our own autotools build

I'll also update this first comment with any other suggestions to consider and leave discussion to comments.

[spwilson2]

Right now I'd vote for SCons since it definitely looks easier to pick up than CMake. I also like the fact that it's using actual python instead of a made up language like CMake. But to be thorough I've read that SCons is slightly slower than CMake (although I don't realistically see that being an issue with how small our source is). It should still be faster than our Make system though, since it can compile at multiple levels/directories at the same time.

kconfig probably isn't worth the work needed to port. And I'm not sure how complicated it is to work with since there likely isn't all that much documentation on it.

autotools reviews are aheh. I don't think this is worth considering at all. The only benefit over others is that many GNU projects use it.

[jdetter]

What build system do you use at work?

[spwilson2]

Well coreboot uses its version of kconfig since they started out by trying to keep Linux like standards for bios development. I've never had to do much in coreboot though so I don't know how difficult it is to actually work with.

[spwilson2]

Probably can't talk about the UEFI build system, but it's not worth looking into :3

[jdetter]

I would absolutely agree that autotools is realistically not going to happen. Although it is the standard for all GNU tools it is impossible to use and maintain.

I do like CMake though. It's not as versatile as autoconf/automake but I think as a build system it's pretty good and widely used.

I've never heard of SCons or kconfig but I will definitely look into them and try to make some sort of opinion about them lol.

[spwilson2]

The basis of UEFI build. But I still would say it's not worth looking into.

[spwilson2]

We're going with scons for the build because I like python. 🍡 We'll need to discuss how we're going to actually set debug mode and such once I get the project building.

[jdetter]

ok, let me know how it goes!

[jdetter]

One thing I just realized about this, is that we won't be able to build Chronos inside of a Chronos system if we use Python. We don't have a python port right now.

[spwilson2]

Hmm, after looking at the build for a while now, I think it would be possible to fix up a lot of it and go back to a non-recursive make build if make is actually supported.

[spwilson2]

If that were the case, we probably would go the kconfig route, which I think is basically a c script that reads .configs and then defines certain variables in kconfig.h which is auto included to all sources.