The following project will be used for most of the tour. The directories (excluding the version system directories) are:

% rls -dV  # V suppresses version system directories
appl		# an application
    appl/appl	# appl's header directory
    appl/cmd	# appl commands
    appl/lib	# appl's API library
    appl/glib	# debugging version of the library
    appl/man	# appl man pages
ctoe		# C to English application
QefAdm
    QefAdm/fsic	# The File System Integrity Package
        QefAdm/fsic/except
    QefAdm/confvrs	# project configuration files
    QefAdm/relinfo	# produces release information file
    QefAdm/touchdir	# contains Touchfiles

One of the principle objectives of the design and development of QEF system was to improve and facilitate the management of large multi-directory projects. QEF may be used to manage builds in a small single directory, but because such a project could not illustrate many of the important QEF features, we will use a more complicated project.

Another crucial QEF design objective was to improve the software process. One of the primary QEF features that was implemented to meet this objective is the separation of the source, object, and destination trees. The separation of the source and object trees has significant advantages, not the least of which is the ability to share a single source tree across all the configurations and developments of the project. Again, QEF may be used to do builds in the source directory, but that would not illustrate many of the features and the power of the QEF system. As such, the following tour will demonstrate doing builds in separated object tree from the very start.

However, this separation of source, working, object, and destination trees does lead to a propagation of trees and there's a danger of getting lost in the forest, hence our first stop on our tour will be qdsrv et al, the tools to guide you through the forest.