[openib-general] Problem with userspace tree structure

[shaharf]

>By the way, I don't think we have to mandate autotools for every
>package under the userspace/ directory (although using autotools is
>the friendliest for users, packagers and developers).
>
>My real objection was just to the recent checkin of Makefiles
>etc. directly under the userspace/ directory.  I think userspace/
>should just have subdirectories for each OpenIB package and nothing
>else.  eg take a look at http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/ to see what I
>think our userspace/ directory should look like.
>
> - R.


Autotools will be used sometime in the near future. As for the userspace directory itself, I really see no harm having a simple makefile that will build everything below it. It doesn't collide with treating each of the sub-trees as a different package, having its autotools setup in it. As I see it, the usermode tools are one set of tools sharing some libraries.

I saw several distributions (such as a SVN distribution) that had many packages, even from completly different sources under one root and the root's make file did build all of them. This can be very convinent, and free the user from a complicated install procedure where you have to manualy build many libraries and tools in a specific order. Make is the tool to do it for you and it is much more common then autotools....

As a matter of fact, this is similar to other tools packages that have many tools under one roof (most tool chains). I am not sure  http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/ is a good example for us - it contains hundreds of related and non related projects that there is really no sense to build them all. We are not there. What we have now is a set of tools. If or when the number of usermode project will grow, and there will be sets of tools that dedicated to some environment or task, I would separate the usermode root to some sub-trees such as switch, host, MPI, ... Right now it is unnecasarily overhead.

BTW, the reason I didn't include tvflash in my make file, because it doesn't build at all on my SUSE9.1 (opteron). If it is only a local problem of mine, I will be glad to inclue it. Same with any other utilities.

Shahar