Autobuild

Autobuild

• Building the Viewer
• Quick Start
• How To
• Glossary
• Examples
• Package Layout
• Class Model
• Build Script Anatomy
• Shell Functions

Overview

Autobuild is a framework for maintaining and building libraries. It acts as director providing a common interface to build and package libraries, but it is not a build system like make or cmake. You will still need platform-specific make, cmake, or project files to configure and build your library. Autobuild will, however, allow you invoke these commands and package the product with a common interface.

Important: Linden Lab Autobuild is not the same as or derived from GNU Autobuild, but they are similar enough to cause confusion.

For Linden old hands: Autobuild is designed as a replacement for the old lindenlib policies; doing the right thing so you don't have to.

Getting Autobuild

Autobuild is available as a Mercurial repository:

https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/autobuild  

Installing Autobuild

You can either run the autobuild command directly from the "bin" directory in a working copy of that repository, or install it as a normal python package by running

python setup.py install

from the top level directory of the working copy. You may need administrative privilege on your system to install into system command directories.

Warning: Windows users with a "native" Python install, should add the Autobuild "bin" directory to their PATH and avoid the Cygwin shell like the plague ;-)

Note: If you are using Cygwin on Windows, use python setup.py install rather than running Autobuild directly from the checkout. This ensures that Cygwin paths are translated to native Windows paths. You must also add your Python scripts directory (for example C:/Program Files/python26/Scripts) to your PATH.

If you do not have administrative privilege on your system, or for any reason you wish to avoid adding autobuild into system-level Python or command directories, you can alternatively use virtualenv and pip, e.g.:

mkdir ~/virtualenvs  # or any directory for your Python-package environments
VENV=~/virtualenvs/autobuild
virtualenv "$VENV"
. "$VENV/bin/activate"

Then your pip install command will install autobuild under $VENV instead of into system directories. (Note that this pip install command will work either way. If you have an active virtualenv, it will install into the virtualenv; if not it will attempt to install into system directories.)

pip install -e "hg+http://hg.secondlife.com/autobuild/#egg=autobuild"
which autobuild

Running Autobuild

Usage:

autobuild options sub-command

Supply zero or more options, and one sub-command.

Options:

Option	Description
--debug	Display debug information
--dry-run	Run tool in dry run mode if available
--help [command]	Find all valid Autobuild tools and show help
--quiet	Display minimal output
--verbose	Display verbose output
-V, --version	Show version information

Sub-commands

Sub-command	Description
build	Build platform targets.
configure	Configure platform targets.
edit	Manage build and package configuration.
install	Fetch and install package archives.
installables	Manipulate installable package entries in the autobuild configuration.
manifest	Manipulate manifest entries to the autobuild configuration.
package	Create an archive of build output.
print	Print configuration.
source_environment	Print the shell environment Autobuild-based build scripts to use (by calling 'eval').
uninstall	Uninstall package archives.
upload	Upload tool for autobuild

Background and Tutorials

Autobuild How To

A tutorial introduction to using autobuild

Autobuild Lexicon

A list of terms and how they are used in the context of autobuild

Autobuild Package Layout

Describes the standard directory tree for packages managed with autobuild

Autobuild Quick Start

A basic walkthrough of how to add autobuild management to an existing software project

Autobuild Class Model

Describes the fundamental objects in the autobuild design and the relationships between them.

Autobuild Examples

Links to packages built with autobuild.

Build Script Anatomy

An annotated build script typical of those used to build third party libraries.

Autobuild Shell Functions

A description of all shell functions provided by Autobuild for use in build scripts.

Contributing to Autobuild

Autobuild is open source. Improvements are most welcome.

• Discussion of and help with Autobuild are available on the opensource-dev mailing list and the #opensl channel on the freenode.org IRC network.
• Bug reports and feature suggestions are tracked in the Open Development project on jira.secondlife.com.
  • Suggested patches for issues from the jira are reviewed on our code review system (see the documentation on how to use it).