[Mono-devel-list] CVS Bootstrap

[Mike Kestner]

Miguel asked me to post my thoughts/concerns here related to the current
situation for bootstrapping a cvs installation of the current mono/mcs
modules.

My understanding of the current bootstrap procedure is that it involves
checking out both the mono and mcs modules from cvs and then doing makes
in several subdirs of the two modules, removing some files from the
mono/runtime dir, and then doing a make install.

Obviously, this is a bad situation.  I've struggled with this myself,
and watched others struggle as well.  I believe this is keeping
potential bugfixers out of our ranks, and will continue to do so until
we fix it.

Since I have no answers to offer, I'd like to kick off this thread by
asking for a discussion of the current procedure.  Help me understand
want exactly has to be done for me to fresh install a mono/mcs cvs image
into /opt/mono, assuming I have red-carpet mono packages installed
already and want to keep them there as a fallback so that I can do my
primary testing for Gtk# development against released packages.

What do I have to do, in what order, and why is each step required, and
why in that order?  What all has to be built before anything is
installed? What all can't be built until after the initial install? 
What all should be rebuilt after the initial install?  What does the
procedure look like on my next cvs up?  When do I need to re-bootstrap,
if ever?

I'm hoping that a discussion of the dependency issues will help us
figure out a proper grouping of functionality so that we can have a sane
bootstrap.  I want to be able to do:

cvs co first-module;autogen.sh;make;make install;cvs co second-module;
make...

And have it "Just Work" like every other free software project out
there.

-- 
Mike Kestner <mkestner at ximian.com>