Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] A native scheme install

[.alyn.post.]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 04:35:07PM +0100, Peter Bex wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 04:15:13PM +0100, Michele La Monaca wrote:
> > > Doesn't this create a bootstrapping problem while installing Chicken?
> > > Chicken needs a working install to install the runtime system, but
> > > your install needs the runtime system to be able to run...
> > 
> > If the build succeeds you have your runtime system under your feet. If
> > the build fails you've got nothing to install.
> 
> On many systems this requires extra jumping through hoops like messing
> with LD_LIBRARY_PATH to make it find the runtime library when it's not
> in the installed location yet.  Or building this install program
> statically.
> 
> Also important: What happens in a cross-build environment?
> 
> I can't tell if it works because you didn't provide a patch for the
> Makefiles to make the build system use this new program.  Perhaps I'm
> just seeing problems that don't exist!
> 

+1 here.  I've tried in the past to care about the ability to run a
program from the source directory, because you can test without
installing, or you can test while ignoring your installed build.
Both extremely nice features.

My general experience is that I've had it working on the current set
of platforms I care about, but then I have to do that work all over
again when I get a new platform.  I gave up with Mac OS X finally,
which while it is better today (though still entirely illegible to
me), was originally released with linking tools that failed to
resemble anything that had come before it.

> > > This would be nice to have, indeed.  But at what cost?
> > 
> > It does work, or it doesn't. I don't see any associated cost. Am I
> > missing anything?
> 
> Extra maintenance (more code) and extra complexity related to
> bootstrapping (or not, see above).  In any case, it's a more involved
> build process.
> 
> > > This seems unneccessary to me.  A BSD install simply always overwrites
> > > a file (unless -b is given and it will unconditionally backup the file).
> > 
> > Correct. Not strictly necessary, but I would prefer to have that
> > feature (not overwriting a file if already installed and identical to
> > the source) rather than not.
> 
> This incurs a performance penalty in the most common case (when installing
> fresh or upgrading), adds more code and doesn't have a noticeable semantic
> difference I can see.
> 

Oh Oh!  Can we migrate the wiki to Mediawiki?  ;-)

-Alan
-- 
my personal website: http://c0redump.org/