build-systems: remove autotools and Android.mk, upgrade CI infrastructure

[marckleinebudde]

Remove plain old Makefile and autotools support. This clauses less friction when adding new tools.

Closes: https://github.com/linux-can/can-utils/issues/526

[marckleinebudde]

Our github workflow only runs autotools, I'll convert it to camke.

[hartkopp]

IMHO removing autotools and its infrastructure is a good choice. No need to have autotools and cmake in parallel as these are doing the same.

But I'm not sure if it is a good idea to drop the 'plain' Makefile as it enables (embedded) systems to build and run can-utils without any additional build system.

Instead I would check the possibility to build the Android binaries with cmake too. There are ongoing discussions which suggest to use cmake in new projects for Android: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39589427/difference-between-cmake-and-ndk-build-in-android-studio-project

And then we finally would have a cmake and a plain Makefile support.

[marckleinebudde]

But I'm not sure if it is a good idea to drop the 'plain' Makefile as it enables (embedded) systems to build and run can-utils without any additional build system.

I think it's a very good idea to drop plain Makefile support.

You want to build can-utils on your embedded system? IMHO if you have a compiler, having cmake doesn't make a big difference.

[marckleinebudde]

Regarding Android. I'm not invested, don't use it and cannot test it. If someone upgrades the CMakeLists.txt, so that we can remove the Android.mk, I'm more than happy!

[yegorich]

We already have all the instructions required for an Android build. Just tried to build against android-ndk-r26d and it works. Hence, we can also remove Android.mk.

As to the plain Makefiles on an embedded system. This is mostly possible on more or less standard distors like Debian/Ubuntu. Builroot, OpenWrt, etc. don't provide a compiler as a target package. So, in most cases you'll have to cross-compile your code.

[yegorich]

The last patch should be called "build-system: remove Anroid.mk".

[marckleinebudde]

Wanted to commit --amend into the 2nd patch. fixed. Thanks.

[hartkopp]

As to the plain Makefiles on an embedded system. This is mostly possible on more or less standard distors like Debian/Ubuntu. Builroot, OpenWrt, etc. don't provide a compiler as a target package. So, in most cases you'll have to cross-compile your code.

Ok. I recently got a Ubuntu 14.04 (with a now unsupported cmake 2.8) on my desk and wanted to build the latest can-utils. The entire repo is enabled to build the can-utils even on very old Linux installations today. And I really like that feature.

As you now removed 50% of the build systems (especially the ugly ones) this is already a nice cleanup. The plain old Makefile does not seem to be hard to maintain together with CMakeLists.txt and it is a good 'learning' example. Therefore I really would like to keep the plain old Makefile together with the cmake build system.

[marckleinebudde]

FWIW I've kept the plain old Makefile. I personally consider it obsolete. I've not added it to the new CI integration. From my point of view this PR is ready to merge.

[marckleinebudde]

@yegorich

We already have all the instructions required for an Android build. Just tried to build against android-ndk-r26d and it works. Hence, we can also remove Android.mk.

Can you create a android CI integration?

[yegorich]

I'll look into it. GitHub images seem to also ship NDK

[marckleinebudde]

I'll look into it. GitHub images seem to also ship NDK

That was quick! Thanks a lot!