Re: [RFC] Header organization

[Adam Fedor]

On Thursday, June 26, 2003, at 03:45 AM, David Ayers wrote:

> Hello again,
>
> I've been tossing this issue back and forth...  The 'next best' 
> suggestion I've come up with so far, is to name the source directories 
> of the official "OpenStep/Cocoa" compiliant header files "openstep" 
> and keep creating symbolic links for Foundation/AppKit when 
> applicable. i.e.

I wanted to avoid links for MingW. But then if we have a Foundation 
directory, that screws up the apple-apple-apple combo. I don't really 
see a good way to solve both problems. Anyway, since we already have a 
hack work-around for MingW, I guess keeping the links would be OK.


> base/Headers/openstep/NS*.h
> base/Headers/gnustep/base/GS*.h
> gui/Headers/openstep/NS*.h
> gui/Headers/gnustep/gui/GS*.h
>
> As too Alexander's suggestion, I would propose:
> gui/Headers/gnustep/gui/private
>
> Personally I generally don't like the notion of headers private to the 
> "core package".  It's a matter of good design to be able to expose a 
> well defined API for a project, that other packages rely on.  But in 
> the case of -gui/-back I absolutly can accept, that the integration 
> must be tighter.  Conceptually I see -back as "subproject" of -gui 
> which technically just happens to be its own project.  Therefore I 
> think it is justified for -gui to have a private subdirectory in its 
> header structure.  I'm not convinced that we should use this anywhere 
> else and for any other reason, but I open to reasoning.

I don't like private headers either. Its better just to put a warning 
that it can change at anytime.

> If this sound good, I'll post a list of files for each directory for 
> reviewal, so that I can start reorganizing the files.  This is also a 
> good time to request any name changes for the files which will be 
> moved.
>
> I'm also considering creating the dummy headers in the old locations 
> with the warning and inclusion of the header from the new location as 
> Alexander suggested "on the fly" during make install, even though I 
> haven't figured out exactly how we want to do this (sed?/awk?).  The 
> reason being, that the headers which are going to be "relocated" 
> during installation (GS*.h) are not the headers which will be 
> relocated in the source tree (NS*.h).  Therefore we can't use the 
> technique of leaving the old header files in CVS and simply update 
> them with the warning and redirection while reimporting the real 
> headers at different location.

I think we can just make a list of headers that were relocated and use 
a script to replace the old headers with a warning, etc.