Re: [Axiom-developer] HyperDoc

[gdr]

Quoting Waldek Hebisch <address@hidden>:

> Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> > Waldek Hebisch <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > | Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> > |
> > | > A while ago, I added support for relative paths -- that was a
> > | > necessary step to make axiom.build-improvements buildable on Windows.
> > |
> > | Why do you want relative paths on Windows?  AFAICS relative paths
> > | cause a lot of trouble and the simplest way to handle them is
> > | converting to absolute path as soon as possible.
> >
> > I beg to disagree.
>
> Could you elaborate: you say that relative paths are needed on
> Windows but you did not say why?

try to build Axiom out of source under MingW.

It gave me lots headache, only to discover later that the absolute
path seen by configure is not the one other tools were expecting.
A workaround was to use "pwd -W" -- only under mingw, because -W
is a non-standard option, only to get into another whoop.

One thing I used to do on the windows machine I was testing
the build is to checkout the working directory on a USB key,
boot under windows, try the build there, fix things, and reboot
back under linux.  That does not work if paths are required to
be absolute -- don't ask me why.

Finally, I solved the issue by making Axiom to accept relative path.

Please notice that what it means is that none of the Axiom component
should assume that $AXIOM is an absolute path; they should only care
that it is a valid path.  The software isn't more difficult or less robust to
write that way.  At installation time, $AXIOM can be set to an absolute
path, which makes all other paths absolute.  Note also that Axiom
is designed to be "re-routed".

There is nothing gained in writing the components to assume that
all paths are absolute.  We could as well assume that Earth is flat.

-- Gaby

> --
>                              Waldek Hebisch
> address@hidden