asterisk/menuselect

MENUSELECT
Copyright (C) 2005-2006, Digium, Inc.
Russell Bryant
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ABOUT

Menuselect is a tool designed to be used in conjunction with GNU make. It
allows for an XML specification of Makefile variables and optional space
delimited values of these variables. These values can then be used in the
Makefile to make various decisions during the build process.

Menuselect also provides a mechanism for dependency checking for each possible
member (value) of each category (Makefile variable). These dependencies are
generally checked by using autoconf and the results provided to menuselect. If
dependencies for a member are not met, the user will not be allowed to make
that selection. In the same way the menuselect does dependency checking, it
also does conflict checking. If a listed conflict for a member is met, then
the user will not be allowed to select it.

For use with automated builds or when the user has no desire to make selections
different than the defined defaults, menuselect can generate a default output
file for use in the build.

Menuselect can also do a sanity check on existing input files. If any member
has been selected that has conflicts or unmet dependencies, then menuselect
will exit with an error and output to notify the user of the situation. This is
typically done at the beginning of the build process to ensure that given all
of the known information, the build is going to be successful.


MENUSELECT DEPENDENCIES

libncurses -- This is needed for the curses frontend.
libnewt -- This is needed for the newt frontend (optional).
libxml2 -- This library, the XML C parser and toolkit of Gnome, is used for
XML parsing.
(http://xmlsoft.org/)

ENVIRONMENT SETUP

The file menuselect.h contains a couple of defines which specify locations for
various files. These locations are relative to the directory from which
menuselect will be executed.

#define OUTPUT_MAKEOPTS_DEFAULT "menuselect.makeopts"
This is the location where the menuselect output will be saved.

#define MENUSELECT_DEPS "build_tools/menuselect-deps"
This is the location where menuselect will expect to find the input file that
provides dependency and conflict information. More information on the format of
this file can be found in the section about dependency and conflict checking.


DEPENDENCY AND CONFLICT CHECKING

Members may have as many conflicts and dependencies specified as needed. An
example of the MENUSELECT_DEPS file would look like this:

DEPENDENCY1=1
DEPENDENCY2=0
CONFLICT1=0

In this case, "DEPENDENCY1" has been met, "DEPENDENCY2" has not been met, and
"CONFLICT1" is not present.

To ask menuselect to do a background sanity check on dependencies and
conflicts, it can be called like this:

./menuselect --check-deps [input_file2] [...]

The format of the input files must be of the same format menuselect uses to
create the OUPUT_MAKEOPTS_DEFAULT.


ENABLING AND DISABLING OPTIONS FROM THE COMMAND LINE

If you would like menuselect to update choices via the command line, it can be
done with the following syntax:

Enable an option:
$ menuselect/menuselect --enable TEST_FRAMEWORK menuselect.makeopts

Enable all options in a category:
$ menuselect/menuselect --enable-category MENUSELECT_TEST menuselect.makeopts

Disable an option:
$ menuselect/menuselect --disable TEST_FRAMEWORK menuselect.makeopts

Disable all options in a category:
$ menuselect/menuselect --disable-category MENUSELECT_TEST menuselect.makeopts


SETTING UP AVAILABLE OPTIONS

The XML specification for the menu lives in the file "menuselect-tree" and should
be in the same directory that menuselect will be executed from. An example
menuselect-tree file as used in the Asterisk project (http://www.asterisk.org) is
provided in example_menuselect-tree

Menu:
The top level tag in menuselect-tree is the tag. All of the categories
reside inside of the ... block.

Menu Attributes:
name="Asterisk Module Selection"
This specifies the title of the menu. It is displayed at the top of the
screen when using the curses frontend

Categories:
A contains members. The category tag can contain a number of
different attributes to specify different behavior.

Category Attributes:
name="MENUSELECT_APPS"
The name attribute is required. This is the name of the variable that will
be in the output from menuselect.

displayname="Applications"
If this is specfied, this is what will be shown in the menu to the user.

positive_output="yes"
The default for menuselect is to output all of the members of a category
that are *not* selected. This is because it is often convenient to be able
to define a full list in the Makefile and then filter out the results from
menuselect. Using GNU make, an example of this would be:
APPS:=$(filter-out $(MENUSELECT_APPS),$(APPS))

remove_on_change=".lastclean"
This attribute can contain a space delimited list of files to be deleted
when it is time to build an output file if any of the members of this
category have changed values from their values for existing input when the
application was started.

Members:
A contains conflicts and dependencies. The member tag can contain a
number of different attributes to specify different behavior.

Member Attributes:
name="app_meetme"
The name attribute is required. This is the value that will be added to the
variable specified by the category when selected (or not selected) depending
on the setting of the positive_output attribute of the category.

displayname="Call Conferencing Application"
If this is specified, this will be provided as a description of this member
when the cursor is on it in the menu.

remove_on_change="apps/app_meetme.o apps/app_meetme.so"
This attribute can contain a space delimeted list of files to be deleted
when it is time to build an output file if the value of this member has
changed from its value in any existing input when the application was
started.

Dependencies:
A dependency for a is specified using a tag. The name of
the dependency corresponds to names in the MENUSELECT_DEPS file. This is an
example of specifying a dependency for a member:

zaptel


Conflicts:
A conflict for a is specified using a tag. The name of
the conflict corresponds to names in the MENUSELECT_DEPS file. This is an
example of specifying a dependency for a member:

win32



REPORTING BUGS

Any bug reports or feature enhancement submissions to menuselect should be
submitted at https://issues.asterisk.org/

Thank you!