[Ns-developers] ns-3 modular build

[Tom Henderson]

On 10/27/2010 03:48 AM, Gustavo Carneiro wrote:

>     - another goal that was not clearly stated earlier is that I think we
>     want to allow future contributors to define the build system that
>     they internally use for their module.  People outside of ns-3
>     maintainers
>     are already doing this.  We will also want to allow them to define
>     their own release schedules.  NSC is a present-day example of this.
>
>
> But to be clear, waf will not build external components in different
> build systems, right?  I am not sure what exactly will be required of
> the ns-3 build system.  If I build something in make or scons, a library
> will be produced, and later I can link my ns-3 simulation program to
> that library.  This is already possible.  A simulation program you build
> with waf can include external headers and link to external libraries.

We still have to define the desired, supported use cases.  I think that 
producing a ns-3 module library that other programs can link is one 
option, but we need to define what this means (is there any attempt to 
make the top-level build system orchestrate the library build, or does 
an ns-3 module have to be built and installed somewhere independently of 
waf)?   Coordinating configuration options and library paths across 
these steps may be tricky.  People may also prefer to just hook into waf 
such as you suggested (a module is untarred or downloaded into the right 
directory that waf will scan for the presence of new modules).

- Tom