Re: gstep-make

[Nicola Pero]

> Hi Nicola,
> 
> some more questions. How difficult is it to add custom source-types to 
> gstep-make ? I have two different cases:
> a) adding files that translate to ObjC
> b) adding files which require a new mechanism
> 
> ---
> Example for a): [...snip...]
> 
> BTW: as an interim solution: would this work with gstep-make:
> ---
> .m: .xobjc
>    pre $< $@
> MyTool_OBJC_FILES = other.m
> ---

Yes - this is how you are supposed to do for a).

It's quite common - another example is if you have Embedded-SQL inside C
(or ObjC) files - then you need to preprocess the sources using an
Embedded-SQL preprocessor.

Generally, you add a rule (in the postamble)

%.m: %.xxx
        {rule running the preprocessor}

then you just list your .m files in xxx_OBJC_FILES, and if some of them
are not yet available, because there is a %.m: %.xxx rule, make will
automatically use this rule to generate them from the .xxx files.

I'm sure it works -- if you have any practical troubles, send me an
example.


> Example for b): this is like adding .java. For example I would like to 
> add Mono support to gstep-make, eg:
> 
> MyWOApp_CSHARP_FILES = fake.cs
> 
> This would compile the .cs to a .NET assembly using Mono and add the 
> assembly as a resource to the WOApp bundle.

Well if you think it's of enough general interest, we can add support for
this stuff inside gnustep-make itself ... but I'm frankly not sure.

Else, for a hand-made solution, I think you need a rule to generate %.xxx
(I don't know the extension for Mono .NET assembly) from %.cs.  Once you
have it, I suppose you want to add a dependency of before-all from the
%.cs files you need to generate.

Hmmm.  Maybe there is a better solution.


> It would be really nice if their would be some documentation/tutorial on 
> how to extend gstep-make to support a) and b). Which files need to be 
> touched to add a) and/or b) etc. This way you don't need to be annoyed 
> for every little gstep-make extension ;-)

Ok - I'll try to remember that there is no documentation in this area :-)

Anyway, for a), you definitely don't need to touch anything inside
gnustep-make.  For b), possibly too.