Re: [Axiom-developer] Makefile.solaris9 stanza

[Kai Kaminski]

Gabriel Dos Reis <address@hidden> writes:

> root <address@hidden> writes:
>
> | On September 14, 2006 9:42 PM you wrote:
> | > > 
> | > > > > > As far as I can see PLF is defined in Makefile.pamphlet 
> | > > but never
> | > > > > > used anywhere in the source.
> | > > > > > 
> | > > > > > I suggest we delete it before somebody tries to use it. We don't
> | > > > > > need more flags and special cases in the source if we can avoid
> | > > > > > it.
> | > 
> | > Damn. So I guess it's too late. This stuff is everywhere. ;)
> | 
> | Yeah, most of those conditionals are what make the C code hard to port.
>
> no harder than the lisp non-portable sutff all over the place in the
> Axiom source code.  I don't think we have a perfect language match
> here in terms of portability.  I've coded for longtime in C and C++; I
> don't think this particular is stuff is handled the proper way.
I'm not going to start another pro-Lisp discussion. But I'd like to
point out that Axiom's Lisp code is not representative of (modern)
Lisp code. Furthermore the conditionals aren't organized very well and
most of them are superfluos anyway, because they are for Lisps that
are long dead and forgotten.

> [...]
>
> | C is the least portable language there is (I know because I had to 
> | figure out most of those conditionals). That's one major motivation
> | toward rewriting it in lisp.
>
> Please, no.  Lisp does not look more portable than C to me.
That could be argued, I guess. Besides Lisp has quite a few other
advantages over C. :-)

Kai