README.customs

                                                            -*-indented-text-*-

GNU make can utilize the Customs library, distributed with Pmake, to
provide builds distributed across multiple hosts.

In order to utilize this capability, you must first download and build
the Customs library.  It is contained in the Pmake distribution, which
can be obtained at:

  ftp://ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu/pub/ai/stolcke/software/

This integration was tested (superficially) with Pmake 2.1.33.


BUILDING CUSTOMS
----------------

First, build pmake and Customs.  You need to build pmake first, because
Customs require pmake to build.  Unfortunately, this is not trivial;
please see the pmake and Customs documentation for details.  The best
place to look for instructions is in the pmake-2.1.33/INSTALL file.

Note that the 2.1.33 Pmake distribution comes with a set of patches to
GNU make, distributed in the pmake-2.1.33/etc/gnumake/ directory.  These
patches are based on GNU make 3.75 (there are patches for earlier
versions of GNU make, also).  The parts of this patchfile which relate
directly to Customs support have already been incorporated into this
version of GNU make, so you should _NOT_ apply the patch file.

However, there are a few non-Customs specific (as far as I could tell)
changes here which are not incorporated (for example, the modification
to try expanding -lfoo to libfoo.so).  If you rely on these changes
you'll need to re-apply them by hand.

Install the Customs library and header files according to the
documentation.  You should also install the man pages (contrary to
comments in the documentation, they weren't installed automatically for
me; I had to cd to the 'pmake-2.1.33/doc' directory and run 'pmake
install' there directly).


BUILDING GNU MAKE
-----------------

Once you've installed Customs, you can build GNU make to use it.  When
configuring GNU make, merely use the '--with-customs=DIR' option.
Provide the directory containing the 'lib' and 'include/customs'
subdirectories as DIR.  For example, if you installed the customs
library in /usr/local/lib and the headers in /usr/local/include/customs,
then you'd pass '--with-customs=/usr/local' as an option to configure.

Run make (or use build.sh) normally to build GNU make as described in
the INSTALL file.

See the documentation for Customs for information on starting and
configuring Customs.


INVOKING CUSTOMS-IZED GNU MAKE
-----------------------------

One thing you should be aware of is that the default build environment
for Customs requires root permissions.  Practically, this means that GNU
make must be installed setuid root to use Customs.

If you don't want to do this, you can build Customs such that root
permissions are not necessary.  Andreas Stolcke <stolcke@speech.sri.com>
writes:

 > pmake, gnumake or any other customs client program is not required to
 > be suid root if customs was compiled WITHOUT the USE_RESERVED_PORTS
 > option in customs/config.h.  Make sure the "customs" service in
 > /etc/services is defined accordingly (port 8231 instead of 1001).

 > Not using USE_RESERVED_PORTS means that a user with programming
 > skills could impersonate another user by writing a fake customs
 > client that pretends to be someone other than himself.  See the
 > discussion in etc/SECURITY.


PROBLEMS
--------

SunOS 4.1.x:
  The customs/sprite.h header file #includes the <malloc.h> header
  files; this conflicts with GNU make's configuration so you'll get a
  compile error if you use GCC (or any other ANSI-capable C compiler).

  I commented out the #include in sprite.h:107:

    #if defined(sun) || defined(ultrix) || defined(hpux) || defined(sgi)
    /* #include <malloc.h> */
    #else

  YMMV.


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