[Mono-dev] Repeat builds of core assemblies

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hey guys,

I was looking at making the MSBuild system work, and during the process I
have encountered a few problems that we have in our existing build system
that are problematic.

The problem is that System, System.XML and System.Configuration are each
defined in terms of the other assemblies.   So we gradually bring up each
one of those assemblies up by first compiling a stub System, which we use
to build System.XML and System.Configuration.   Then we rebuild System,
this time referencing System.XML and System.Configuration so we can take a
dependency on them, and so on.

To build a complete System.dll for a particular profile (net_2_0, net_4_0,
etc) takes three steps:

   - Core Build
   - Secondary Build:
      - Core Build +
      - Defines: XML_DEP + SECURITY_DEP
      - Refs:
         - -r:PrebuiltSystem=../lib/Previous/System.dll
         - -r:System.Xml.dll
         - -r:MonoSecurity=Mono.Security.dll
      - Final Build:
      - Secondary Build +
      - defines: -d:CONFIGURATION_DEP
      - Refs:
         - System.Configuration.dll

The above is what is required to bring up System.

Our implementation has one major problem: it overwrites the intermediate
files.  So the core build output is overwritten by the secondary build, and
the secondary build is overwritten by the final build.

It seems that historically, instead of introducing temporary directories
for each stage, instead we hacked our way out of it.   We introduced a
LIBRARY_USE_INTERMEDIATE_FILE whose sole purpose was to work around the
case where Windows was actively telling us we were doing something wrong
(we were overwriting a file that we were actively referencing!)

The above is also likely going to prevent reliable parallel builds, or
probably means that we introduced some gross hack to make the above work in
parallel.

I am going to try to fix this, but the Makefile goop is pretty dense, and I
might fail.   I just figured I should share my findings in case
civilization comes to an end and a future archeologist tries to figure out
why this was not working.

These are the defines that we use to bring up System for each profile:

basic Profile:

basic: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:BOOTSTRAP_BASIC -d:CONFIGURATION_2_0

basic: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:BOOTSTRAP_BASIC -d:CONFIGURATION_2_0
-d:XML_DEP


Build Profile:

build: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0

build: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0  -d:XML_DEP


Net 2.0 profile:

net_2_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0  -d:CONFIGURATION_2_0

net_2_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0  -d:CONFIGURATION_2_0  -d:XML_DEP
-d:SECURITY_DEP

net_2_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0  -d:CONFIGURATION_2_0  -d:XML_DEP
-d:SECURITY_DEP -d:CONFIGURATION_DEP


Net 4.0 profile:

net_4_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0

net_4_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0 -d:XML_DEP  -d:SECURITY_DEP

net_4_0: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0 -d:XML_DEP  -d:SECURITY_DEP  -d:CONFIGURATION_DEP


Net 4.5 profile:

net_4_5: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0 -d:NET_4_5
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0

net_4_5: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0 -d:NET_4_5
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0 -d:XML_DEP  -d:SECURITY_DEP

net_4_5: -d:NET_1_1 -d:NET_2_0 -d:NET_3_0 -d:NET_3_5 -d:NET_4_0 -d:NET_4_5
-d:CONFIGURATION_2_0  -d:XML_DEP -d:SECURITY_DEP -d:CONFIGURATION_DEP


Miguel
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