Re: [Axiom-developer] build un-portability

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

"Bill Page" <address@hidden> writes:

| On November 10, 2006 10:23 PM Gaby wrote:
| > ...
| > Bill Page wrote: 
| > | I am afraid that you have also just stated the reason why
| > | embedded space in file names always cause problems for unix
| > | based tools - because the developers give this a very low
| > | priority. But it is a serious issue when porting to both
| > | Windows and MAC where spaces in file names are common. At
| > | very least we should try not to write code that we know is
| > | not portable.
| > 
| > In this particular case, I suspect that Axiom will be best built
| > under Cygwin or variants where Unix convertion is quite dominant
| > (I know you can use the Windows style, but very often they cause
| > troubles).
| 
| Well, at the moment Axiom can not be built under Cygwin because
| GCL cannot be built under Cygwin. Maybe someday we will find
| someone who wants to solve the problems of building GCL under
| Cygwin...

I got report that GCL be built under Cygwin; maybe that was wrong?

| On Windows GCL and Axiom (only AXIOMsys) are currently built under
| MSYS/MinGW which provides a native Windows environment without
| conversion. File name with spaces are suppored but some of the
| unix-specific system commands on which Axiom depends (e.g. 'rm'
| and 'cat'), another source of un-portability, have to be emulated
| in such a way as to parse blanks in a non-standard way.
| 
| > And it is just easy to fix the environment.
| 
| I am not sure what you mean "fix the environment". Do you mean
| target only linux-based systems for Axiom?

Oh no.  I meant "avoid space in names".

| > In this particular case.  I'm not saying Axiom should not
| > support them.  I'm saying it really has low priority on list
| > of things to do.
| 
| Ok.
| 
| > From experience, I know that for GCC we had people trying to
| > build GCC with embedded colons.  That was a pain in the ass
| > and usually led to obscure codes.  My personal opinion is that
| > the codes should not be obscured just to support exotic stuff.
| > YMMV.
| 
| I suppose, but I suspect that the codes would not have been
| so obscured if the original code had not made unnecessary
| assumptions about the character set from which file names are
| composed.

That is not the case.  It fell out of the basic tools used.

| > | Speaking of your "list of things to do in buid-improvments":
| > | Have you already or are you planning to publish this list?
| > 
| > I suspect a good part of it is in README.build-improvements.
| > The rest keeps poping when I try different ideas in different
| > local trees. I'll upate README.build-improvements.  Some of
| > them are not really related to build machinery.
| > 
| 
| After you update README.build-improvements, I would like to
| publish it on the Axiom Wiki. Ok?

Sure, as long as you keep the published and the repo versions in sync.

-- Gaby