Within this book, we present the fundamentals of the VR Juggler 2.0 build system, a complex piece of software in its own right that manages the compilation of the various modules that make up VR Juggler 2.0 (and beyond, I suspect). Those few readers who may be familiar with the VR Juggler 1.0 build system may recognize a few similarities, but truly, the Doozer++-based build is quite different than what was originally intended to be backwards compatible with an IRIX-only build written for the first version of VR Juggler (then called VRLib).

Since 1998, the Autoconf-based VR Juggler build system has grown more and more complex. Originally, the build made use of Autoconf, GNU make, and a few small Perl scripts to simplify installations. Now, in mid-2002, the build system still makes use of all those tools, but it has many, many custom m4 macros (most of which come from Doozer++), makefile stubs, Autoconf-like scripts written in Perl, and custom CVS utilities. It may yet evolve to include Java- and Python-based tools.

With all this (growing) complexity, the VR Juggler 2.0 build system is a colossal effort in software choreography wherein all the pieces have to come together in such a way as to exude a Broadway-caliber performance. In this book, I strive to lay out the steps like one of Arthur Miller's finest teachers.