Re: Suggestion about pkg() function

[c.]

On 28 Nov 2010, at 11:04, Thomas Weber wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 10:20:02AM +0100, c. wrote:
>> 
>> On 26 Nov 2010, at 19:32, José Luis García Pallero wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> I think that it would be interesting to add an option to pkg()
>>> function in order to pass arguments to the Makefile for compiling a
>>> package. For example, if in the makefile the order for compiling a c
>>> source code is $(CC) -Wall source.c -o source.o, and CC environment
>>> variable point to the sun compiler but the options in the compilation
>>> order are for the gcc compiler expecting that gcc is the default in
>>> CC, it produces errors. 
> 
> In that case, the Makefile is buggy or your code is compiler-specific.
> I'm not sure that adding extra complexity to pkg() is the right way to
> go. After all, we are duplicating autoconf functionality here.
> 
>>> Not all packages for Octave have a configure script that can create
>>> the Makefile and not all people knows autotools
> 
> Then they should be educated. After all, if we replicate autotools'
> functionality, developers will have to gain the knowledge that's
> currently built into autotools *and* write cross-platform,
> cross-compiler tests.
> 
>       Thomas

Thomas,

Even using autotools, sometimes the user has to specify the location of 
libraries/headers 
installed in non standard locations so adding the option to pass 
preprocessor/compiler/linker
flags to 'pkg install' or 'pkg build' does not mean replicating autotools 
functionality.

Another way to do this would be having mkoctfile honour environment variables 
like CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS,
which it already does if called directly and not via pkg.

Don't you agree this discussion should be moved to the developers mailing list?
c.