FW: Library infrastructure

[Matthew Donadio]

I think one way to look at this is to examine similar ideas for other
systems that work well.

The FreeBSD ports tree is very successful in bringing in a diverse set
of libraries and programs.  Dependencies and builds are pretty much
handled automagically through some (rather complicated) Makefiles.  They
have also provided a fairly nice web interface for browsing and
searching the ports tree.  Contributions and updates are handled through
CVS.  Conceivably, this could handle issues like building and installing
libraries for each installed compiler, and eliminate the need to
distribute binaries.

I think that building and including libraries has to be standardized
across the different compilers.  One big benefit of using unix is that
the C suite is basically consistent across platforms.

Other random thoughts...

I think that in addition to the Report and Tutorial, a Best Practices
document needs to be developed.  This would outline the preferable
naming conventions, indentation, make targets, and also recommend the
use of tools like Haddock of HDoc for generating consistent
documentation.

I am willing to use my DSP library as a guinea pig for any ideas (it is
still a little immature, though), and to help out where I can.

-- 
Matthew Donadio (m.p.donadio@ieee.org)