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compiling qtractor and figuring out a good environment

Hello,
Nice website. Qtractor looks promising. I'm relatively new to linux audio programming so I thought I'd learn from your project. Amazing job so far! I followed your build instructions and ran it from the command line. What is the most basic way to make changes to the code and see the changes? I tried something simple like changing the text in the about dialog box, but when I type make, it recompiles the whole thing, and I still don't see the about dialog changed! Shouldn't make only recompile the newly edited files?

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rncbc's picture

Hi, thanks.

I think you've missed something in the build instructions.

If you're checking out from CVS remember to issue:

  make -f Makefile.cvs

provided you have autoconf stuff installed properly, before getting into the standard procedure:

  ./configure
  make

After this point, make will only recompile the source code files that get changed. that is normal and expected behavior.

There must be something that one of us is missing, don't really know what. I assume you have changed src/qtractorMainForm.cpp to suit your changes to the about-box in qtractorMainForm::helpAbout() method. Doing make should have recompiled that unit alone, not the whole project. And as you say if the changes haven't come up on that about-box thereafter, then something is wrong. Can't really say what. Maybe you could check your procedure again and tell me more about the details, one by one.

Cheers
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

Doh! I wrote a long note, but I'm editing it out here. I was typing "qtractor" in the top-level directory, and bash was executing the one in bin and not the newly edited one in the qtractor directory. Works like a charm.
It only compiles qtractorMainForm.cpp when I change that file. It compiles many more files when I change qtractorAbout.h. I'm thinking it's because many more files depend on that header. That's what was confusing me with respect to the long compilation that I thought was doing the whole thing over again.

rncbc's picture

But you say you're still having problems?

Yes, changing a header file (.h) will end rebuilding a couple of files at least, depending on which ones it depends on. Incidentally, qtractorAbout.h is included in almost every other file, so changing it is just like the same as rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. Such a move can also be explicitly taken by doing a:

  make clean

or, more radically,

  make -f Makefile.cvs clean

which will wipe everything that was generated by the configure and build process altogether.

Enjoy.
--
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela

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