940603 - Remove gaia build flags

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia, defect)

Description

[Kevin Grandon :kgrandon]

Right now we have too many build flags in gaia. Here's how I think this should be:

Device - Developers just run 'make'
B2G desktop, Simulator, GaiaFox - Developers just run 'DESKTOP=1 make'

This means removing/combining the following shims: DEBUG, DESKTOP_SHIMS, SIMULATOR.

Our extensions should be flexible enough to work anywhere, and this may mean moving some stuff into the platform.

Comment 1

[James Lal [:lightsofapollo]]

Yey!

Though I would argue that the makefile should not have even one flag... if we need flags we are not really using a makefile as a makefile anymore. (bin/* all the things)

Comment 2

[Michael Henretty [:mikehenrty][:mhenretty]]

++

Is there a way we can make the flags transparent, ie:

`make desktop` rather than `DESKTOP=1 make`? I know we'd need to move some things around in the makefile, but having a target rather than flag has a lot of benefits, like tab completion, makefile readability, easy typing, etc.

Perhaps this is what lightsofapollo is asking for?

Comment 3

[Kevin Grandon :kgrandon]

Yes, it sounds like moving to targets instead of flags is a much better approach. In that case I think the ideal situation is something like: 

$ make - (Default command) builds a profile for the device.
$ make desktop - Builds a profile for b2g desktop OR Firefox Nightly OR Simulator.

By knowing what the targets are, we know that we can never break those targets in any situation.

Comment 4

[Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau]]

I don't think we can support Firefox desktop and b2g desktop/simulator with the same flag,
that's so differents...
But I agree on the fact that we should have flags (no matter which kind, env variable or targets, I don't see much differences) that would easily ensure that we are building a profile that will work for the targeted environment.
I recently added SIMULATOR=1 to easily ensure that the profile will work in the simulator.

Keep in mind, that we are working on simplifying desktop environments to only one.
  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.developer-tools/9Q7Gnrpe740
That's the main goal we should be targetting, it will allow to have only one unique kind of profile/shims/helpers for local development.
We are actively working on bug 935014 which aims to first merge the simulator and b2g desktop.
We will then have to figure out how to merge the new simulator/b2g-desktop with the firefox environment.

Comment 5

[[:fabrice] Fabrice Desré]

Please also keep supporting eng and user (aka production) profiles both for device and desktop.

Comment 6

[Kevin Grandon :kgrandon]

Bug 1112745 will remove the majority of these flags, so this is no longer needed.