[ROOT] VC++ project files for ROOT and a rootcint add-in

From: Matthew D. Langston (langston@SLAC.stanford.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 11 2000 - 22:17:55 MET


I am looking for VC++ 6.0 workspace and project description files for ROOT
2.25.03.  Has anyone created these?  These VC++ 6.0 workspace and project
description files would only be useful for people who are doing ROOT
development.  However, on a related note, has anyone created a set of VC++
workspace and project description files for creating ROOT programs and
libraries?  This would basically be the equivalent of `root-config --cflags`
and `root-config --libs` for UNIX development of ROOT programs and
libraries.  Finally, a VC++ "add-in" that automatically calls rootcint to
generate the CINT dictionaries would be nice.

I realize that probably none of these utilities have been written for VC++
ROOT development, but I wanted to solicit feedback from Windows ROOT
developers anyway.  Hopefully they exist, but if not then perhaps some of us
could collaborate and contribute them to the ROOT project.  What follows is
some thought about possible solutions:

It would make sense to want ROOT's project description files for VC++ to
automatically be kept in sync with the UNIX project description files (i.e.
the *.mk files and the associated UNIX+make build procedure).  This sounds
like a lot of work.  One idea would be to describe the ROOT build procedure
in an XML file so that project description files could be automatically
generated for any build system (i.e. ROOT's current UNIX+make build system,
the VC++ build system, the KDevelop build system, an Automake build system,
and any other build system that might come down the pipe which users may
need).

I don't know of any XML schema for describing software build systems, but I
haven't looked that hard either.  Does anyone else?  If such a schema
existed, then maybe it would make sense to use it to describe the ROOT
project database and build system.  We could then trivially add support for
multiple build systems by writing simple XSLT templates for each build
system.

I would be willing to contribute XSLT templates for VC++ workspace and
project description files, and to assist in XSLT templates for UNIX+make
files, if there were interest in creating an XML schema (or using an
existing one) which describes ROOT's build architecture.  However, it
wouldn't be worth the effort unless there was enough interest to warrant
such a change to be officially adopted, since otherwise the ROOT XML file(s)
would have to be manually updated by hand whenever the ROOT source tree
changed, etc.

Does anyone else have some thoughts about this?

Regards, Matt

--
Matthew D. Langston
SLD, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
langston@SLAC.Stanford.EDU



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