Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] OSX build fails

[Roland Knall <rknall@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with you in general, still at some companies installing from source might not be an option. And it might also implode on you, if you then have to search for dependencies of dependencies of dependencies ....

Especially on older LTS distros this can be quite some work, and you tend to get stuck at certain dependency incompatibilites. 

People tend to accept building custom versions of depending libraries though. In my experience this acceptance get's a lot smaller with the general build environment though.

Don't take this discussion the wrong way, as I said I was just wondering if it is generally something we should talk about. In no way would I want to force the autotools to certain version.

But please update the dependency pages in the wiki and the developer documentation with the required version, so that maintainer can take the new version into account. 

cheers

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 1:06 PM, João Valverde <joao.valverde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 22-11-2017 11:26, João Valverde wrote:

On 22-11-2017 11:02, Roland Knall wrote:

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 11:45 AM, João Valverde <joao.valverde@tecnico.ulisboa.pt <mailto:joao.valverde@tecnico.ulisboa.pt>> wrote:



    On 22-11-2017 08:37, Roland Knall wrote:

        Might be a stupid question but on my account, only Linux
        machines are now capable of building Wireshark out of the box
        with autotools on default, right?


    I'm not sure what you mean by "on default", but it seems unlikely
    that anyone could build Wireshark without having to install at least
    one dependency.

    BSDs usually supply a gmake command for GNU Make. Not sure if it is
    installed by default.



Installing a dependency is  one thing, and fine by me. This includes installing a newer version of make. But for certain builders, that might not be an option (older Linux systems) as no packages might exist, and they will have to build from source. In those cases, building the make-system from source, just to use autotools is too much to ask for in my book. All those people have already an alternative in place though with cmake, but still, autotools sets the bar a little higher then cmake, and that is in my opinion not a good idea if both systems should be equal by design. So if they should be equal, that would also require the same prerequisites, or at least the same level of obtainability.

That would be "installing a newer version of make" on OSX because of licensing issues.

I don't understand either your logic of build systems "equal by design". I would hope not, that seems kind of pointless.

We are giving a lot of thought to ancient systems with all sorts of restrictions. I don't disagree with that, it's generally a good thing to be considerate, but it remains to be seen the impact on systems other than OSX.

For OSX please use CMake instead.

And I would like to answer a point that is frankly starting to grate on me (please don't take that personally, it's not).

If you are installing Wireshark dependencies from binary repositories you should be installing Wireshark from a binary package too. If your vendor does not provide one complain to them.

If you are building Wireshark from source presumably you can also install dependencies from source. It's not black magic.

Having a binary repository is in no way a requirement to use a UNIX-like system.

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