Re: [eclipse-dev] FreeBSD eclipse port

["James E. Flemer" <jflemer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff, answers are inline.

On Sun, 9 Feb 2003 Jeff_McAffer@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> James,
>
> This is interesting.  Some questions:
>
> - Can you summarize the two changes you had to make?

I had to switch two linux header files for freebsd ones in
the libupdate sources.

--- plugins/org.eclipse.update.core.linux/src/update.cpp.orig   Fri Jan 31 22:36:59 2003
+++ plugins/org.eclipse.update.core.linux/src/update.cpp        Fri Jan 31 22:41:45 2003
@@ -3,8 +3,8 @@
  * All Rights Reserved.
  */

-# include <sys/types.h>
-# include <sys/statfs.h>
+# include <sys/param.h>
+# include <sys/mount.h>
 # include <update.h>

 /*
--- end ---

> - When you do the build, do you compile the C code or do you build the
> binaries separately and then just include them?

I rebuild the three libraries and the eclipse launcher.  I
use the existing makefiles where possible and just use the
freebsd ports framework for the rest.

> - Can you tell us more about the approach that you are taking?

FreeBSD has a ports collection[1] that is a framework of
makefiles and a few other support files which facilitate
the building and installation of several thousand third
party applications.  So I just made a "port" for eclipse,
which builds the three binary libraries and the launcher,
then installs a slew of files in the appropriate place.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.html

> Some answers:
> - The build process is quite complex.  The source builds you download
> include a mess of generated build.xml files. These are generated based on
> the various OS, window system and architecture configurations being
> requested and are only really designed to build what was being built at the
> time they were generated (e.g., they may to have the OS, WS and ARCH values
> right in them).  Since FreeBSD/gtk is not one of the standard
> configurations you need to generate the build.xmls for that configuration.
> To do that you should get the "releng builder" (the mechanism that
> generates the build.xmls etc) and update it to know about FreeBSD.

Is this the "releng" builder: org.eclipse.releng.* ?  I did
not notice that before; I will take a look at it shortly.
Is there any primer or other docs I could skim to get up to
speed on it?  I'll read the source if not.  ;-)

> - Also, the build mechanism is an area that we want to look at in 2.2.
> Your input is greatly appreciated.

I think that libswt should be made readily available in a
stand alone package.  When I began porting eclipse to
freebsd, I initially worked on a stand alone libswt, and
others on the ports list felt that that would be the best
way to add eclipse to the freebsd ports tree.  (It would
also help separate the binary build from the Java build.)

Also FreeBSD users tend to want pure-source distributions
when using the ports tree, so having a cleaner way to
re-build the libraries and the launcher would be optimal.
I believe someone mentioned adding "platform.xml" build
files (or similar) to eclipse, so that the binary
components would become part of the Ant build.

And a final note on the build, when I got the build done,
the "install" target just copied the launcher.  I had to
download the prebuilt package and extrapolate the list of
required files to move into /usr/local/eclipse from the
source build directory.  Perhaps there is code in the
"releng" source which takes care of this, I will
investigate this.

-James