[Libreoffice] feature/gnumake4

[Tor Lillqvist]

> I've done my best I think but there was some error with set_soenv
> (first patch) 

Hmm, I looked at the first patch, and I definitely don't think we should re-introduce some Hamburg-specific stuff that we don't understand, want or need. Not even OOo at Apache will (once they have something they can start trying to build) need those _ISBOOTSTRAP, WORK_STAMP etc things. All that (for instance, maybe half (?) of build.pl) is double-plus-obsolete.

> There were some changes with precompiled headers.
> But that's not finished. Are they useful for something. I don't
> understand what that should do and have not asked yet.

In theory, pre-compiled headers are quite useful for Windows compilations, they are said to speed up the build significantly.

In practice, successfully being able to use pre-compiled headers requires awareness of it and carefulness and following correct (documented somewhere in the OOo wiki, hopefully) procedure while coding, and we certainly have not had any of that. I once tried to use pre-compiled headers when building on Windows, I had to fix lots of stuff here and there in one module, and in another it was just hopeless, so I gave up. I wonder if even Hamburg actually used pre-compiled headers in their Windows builds?

I now think that we should just not bother even trying. A key to success is recognizing your limitations.

Of course, the above is just my personal opinion, more clever people might disagree.

--tml