[Biojava-l] New cross-platform build system for BioJava

[Thomas Down]

We've seen several comments recently concerning the old BioJava
build system (a set of UNIX-only shell script files).  Today
I wrote a simple replacement, which uses pure Java, and ought
to run out of the box on more-or-less any platform with the
JDK installed.  It's still a bit rough around the edges, and
has so far only been tested under UNIX, but it should be a 
workable alternative to the old scripts, and may eventually
replace them.

If you want to try this:

  - Check out the latest biojava-live source tree from CVS,
    (see http://cvs.biojava.org/ if in doubt)

  - If you don't have it already, get Sun's xml.jar, and
    place it in the biojava-live directory.

  - Change into the biojava-live directory.   For now, you'll
    need to build the new build tool yourself

        javac build/Builder.java

    Once things have settled down, I'll check a compiled
    version into CVS, and this step will no longer be
    necessary.

You can now build the whole project by typing:

   java build.Builder all

Specific packages can be updated using something like:

   java build.Builder package org.acedb org.acedb.seq

You can also build the API documentation:
 
   java build.Builder docs

Developers may note that I've created a new file, package.inf,
in each major biojava package.  These files are read by the
build tool, and provide a potential way of configuring the build
on a package-by-package basis.  At the moment, these files
are in a trivial non-format, and just specify the group headings
for packages in the JavaDoc API.  In future, this format could
be expanded to suit the needs of the build system.

Happy hacking,

Thomas.
-- 
There are whose study is of smells
And to attentive schools rehearse
How something mixed with something else
Makes something worse.