imake or mkmk?

A fundamental strength of the ChorusOS operating system is its portability across a range of target family hardware architectures. The trade-off made to achieve broad portability manifests itself as build management complexity. ChorusOS system builds require powerful tools to generate the necessary Makefiles to render the process more straightforward. These tools, imake and mkmk:

• Provide the rules for compiling

• Manage dependencies

• Allow you to add components

• Enable you to configure source files with configurator or the ews graphical tool

ChorusOS operating system builds involve make for end-result build tasks, and involve imake and mkmk for generating and managing Makefiles inside components. The following tables indicate which standard system components are managed using which Makefile generation tool.

Table 4-1 Components Managed with imake

Component	Description
BSP	Bootstrap code
DRV	Drivers
EXAMPLES	Example applications

Table 4-2 Components Managed with mkmk

Component	Description
NUCLEUS	Microkernel and related code
OS	POSIX, file system and networking layers of the operating system

The rule of thumb for choosing between imake and mkmk is simple: use imake if you can; use mkmk if you must. User-level application components can be handled using imake. Hardware driver components can be handled using imake. Subsystem components -- such as microkernel components and components that modify the POSIX, file system and networking layers of the operating system itself -- might require you to use mkmk.