Ian Piumarta wrote:
Hi Brad,
I'm going thru the unix configuration doc and files to learn how it is configured for unix development. However, what if you have only Cross platform plugin files? They would go into the Cross subdirs. What have others done to create and build plugins that are cross platform?
If you don't need special treatment on Unix then all you need to do is create the Cross/plugins/Whatever/whatever.c file (and any attendant .h files) and run 'autoconf' to recreate the configure script. Thereafter 'configure' will know about the plugin and will attempt to build it.
Do you create your own hand-made Makefile (etc)?
You only need to do this if you have special compiler flags or header directories that you need to pass to the compiler on Unix. In that case look at Makefile.inc in one of the other plugin directories to see typical things that you can do. For very unusual plugins you may even need a complete 'Makefile.in' to replace the automatically generated one entirely. (The vm has its own Makefile.in, for example.)
You might also (in very demanding plugins) require configuration-time options and tests, or even to disable the plugin entirely if required libraries are not installed. If you put a file called 'acinclude.m4' in your plugin directory, autoconf will include it in the configure script at the appropriate moment. (See the other acinclude.m4 files for typical things you can do.) Of course, you need to run 'autoconf' again after every change to an acinclude.m4 file.
But normally you won't need anything special: put the .c and .h files in Cross/plugins/YourPlugin/ and run autoconf to rebuild the configure script. See the 'RePlugin' for example, which has no Unix files at all.
Thanks. I actually had it working before, but now I can't configure it. I can't remember which directory I placed the Makefile.inc!
I'm kinda having some trouble following the directions. You wrote very clear directions but probably didn't follow them well ;-) I could not get config/configure (is that what you are referring to as 'autoconfig'? Or is that a new script?) to find my makefile.inc no matter where I put the plugin directory (although it did create the Makefile. )
But anyway.... Since I don't really have a unix specific plugin, I want to put it in Cross for now and I'll try that.
Have you used VMMakerTool? If so, how do you use it to generate C files in the Cross directory?
brad