Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] platform auto-detection mechanism

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 19:31:31 +0100 Michele La Monaca <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Mario Domenech Goulart <address@hidden> 
> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 01:23:22 +0100 Michele La Monaca <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Cross-compilation is critical, at least to me, since I need it to use
>> Chicken at work.  Anyway, I think cross-compilation support is an
>> important feature for any project.
>
> I would sincerly like to have a better understanding of your use case.
> But maybe we are already way too OT to continue this discussion in
> this thread. Let's discuss it privately or start another thread if you
> want to.

Where I work we build Linux distributions for different hardware
platforms using OpenEmbedded (http://www.openembedded.org), a
cross-compilation framework.  Some of our products use Chicken. We've
developed a Chicken layer that can be plugged into OpenEmbedded
(https://github.com/OSSystems/meta-chicken).  That layer allows us to
easily cross-compile Chicken and eggs.


>> You probably are thinking that Chicken is too conservative at accepting
>> patches for the core.  It may be true, depending on your point of view,
>> but there's a good reason for that: we have quite a few developers with
>> very limited time using only a small subset of the considerably large
>> number of supported platforms (hardware and software).  When something
>> breaks, there's only a small group of people to expect fixes from.
>>
>> Some parts of the core are specially critical, and the build system is
>> one of them.  If something breaks on a platform which is not easily
>> available to developers, it can turn into a release blocker, for
>> example.
>>
>> But, please, don't let all that put you down at contributing.
>
> Don't worry, I am not that kind of person. Even if none of my patches
> slip in, I will continue to use chicken and, possibly, contributing. I
> think I can recognise good things and chicken is one of them, for
> sure.

Cool. :-)


> Eventually, I might evaluate to mantain a private branch for those
> patches I consider valuable to me.  Unfortunately, I have another
> couple of ideas I want to implement, but I am afraid of the ire of
> Jim, Peter and maybe even Felix :)

Despite all the conservatism, Chicken developers are quite open to
improvements.  So, if you have improvement suggestions or bug fixes,
please, don't keep them for yourself. :-)


>> I see.  My main concern is not not autodetecting the platform, but
>> misdetecting it.  That can be tricky on Windows (and remember: we have
>> quite a few people testing on Windows).  The detected platform must
>> match, for example, the syntax for paths in PREFIX (see section 5
>> "Platform issues" in README).
>
> You have a point here. Let me propose a compromise: detecting Windows
> is easy and bullet-proof. Distinguishing among those Unix-like
> flavours might be actually tricky. But once you have detected you are
> on Windows you can stop further detection mechanisms and fall-back to
> the normal system.  Of course you may be more informative in this case
> if you want to. For example:
>
> # make
>
> Please select your target platform by running one of the following commands:
> make PLATFORM=cygwin
> make PLATFORM=mingw               ->    if unsure use this one
> make PLATFORM=mingw-msys
>
> For more information, consult the README file.

Sounds good.  I'd just replace "if unsure use this one" by "if unsure,
be sure, otherwise you'll most certainly screw up PREFIX". :-)


Best wishes.
Mario
-- 
http://parenteses.org/mario