[Axiom-developer] Desired functionality from noweb

[daly]

Cliff,

I'm not sure I'm the best example of concerns about build times
as my use of literate programming isn't typical.

re: build times

My normal way of working is to have 2 windows open. 
The left window is emacs split into 2 buffer panes (file and shell)
The right window is xdvi pointing at my current .dvi output.

I make a change in one of the emacs panes which is editing my
pamphlet file. I switch to the emacs shell pane, type 

make -f Makefile.whatever

and then switch back to continue editing.

The Makefile.whatever runs notangle to rebuild the source,
compile the source, and run the test cases. It also runs
latex and rebuilds the .dvi file. Note that xdvi will
automatically reread the .dvi file if it gets the focus.

Thus, I compile/test/document about once every 10 lines or so.
Breakage in either the program or the latex is immediate.



re: build times, axiom system builds

I am constantly rebuilding axiom. I have rebuilt axiom about
20 times this past weekend, slowly trying to creep up on a
bug that is causing the build to fail as well as merging and
checking build changes. Every build is a full build because
I need to make sure that it all works. 

One example of this kind of breakage is that you can no longer
build axiom from the repository. There is a time bomb in the
diagrams.sty package I used to document clifford.spad which
will stop the build and request that you fetch a new copy of
the diagrams.sty file. This broke and was fixed back in the
first week of this year. I'm surprised that no-one complained.

Tim