Clobber the build environment so that it is as it would be after running configure in a clean directory tree.

Build the object files for the optimized version of the library binaries. Part of this process is to generate dependencies for each .c and .cpp file on the fly. These dependencies are listed in corresponding .d files and are updated automatically whenever a change in a source or header file is detected. All targets, except 'cleandepend', run in the subdirectories of the source tree (not just the one that builds optimized object files) ensure that dependencies are up to date all the time. Compiling from the top-level directory of the build environment puts the optimized object files in a platform- and ABI-specific subdirectory named as obj/platform/ABI/ISA/opt.

Create the static and dynamic versions of the library binaries from the optimized object files. The binaries are built in the subdirectory named as lib/ISA/opt and are linked to from the lib directory. Note that lib may be named differently on some platforms. On IRIX, for example, depending on the default ABI, it may be named lib32 or lib64. It is referred to as lib for simplicity.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the debugging version of the object files and library binaries.

Once all libraries are built, links are set up in the lib directory and its ISA subdirectory (if there is one) that point to the default library version. This is currently the debugging version since that is what developers are likely to use most frequently. These links overwrite those made in step 3 (and repeated in step 4).

Compile VRJConfig if the Java compiler is available and compiling of it has not been disabled by the user (refer to the section called “Useful Variables” for more information).