Re: gnustep-make experiment

[David Ayers]

Nicola Pero schrieb:
>>But I actually want to clarify what I meant with the third option for
>>the configure issue...  My goal is to have ./configure of GDL2 identify
>>whether libGorm is installed/usable so it can decide whether the palette
>>should be build or not.
>>
>>(The servers I deploy my GSWeb App on do not have X/AppKit/GORM but use
>>GDL2 & GSWeb... currently I need to disable building the palette
>>explicitly via configure option.)
> 
> 
> I agree with Matt and others that we want to have gnustep-config able to
> output compile/link flags.  I have a plan in mind for that. :-)
> 
> But in your case, what about some makefile variable/function that lets you
> check if a gnustep library is installed or not ?
> 
> We could add to gnustep-make a
> 
>  GNUSTEP_FIND_LIBRARY
> 
> and 
> 
>  GNUSTEP_FIND_FRAMEWORK
> 
> functions, that would return the location of a GNUstep library/framework, or
> nothing if they don't exist.
> 
> Then in your GNUmakefile you could just do
> 
> ifneq ($(call GNUSTEP_FIND_LIBRARY, Gorm)$(call GNUSTEP_FIND_FRAMEWORK, 
> Gorm),)
>  SUBPROJECTS += GormPalette
> fi
> 
> to compile your GormPallette iff libGorm.so (or Gorm.framework) is installed, 
> without even needing the configure step. :-)
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> NB: Here is an example GNUSTEP_FIND_LIBRARY implementation for you to test 
> with --
> 
> GNUSTEP_FIND_LIBRARY = $(strip $(wildcard $(addsuffix $(strip $(1)).so, \
> $(GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
> $(GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
> $(GNUSTEP_NETWORK_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
> $(GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib)))
> 
> It would be defined inside gnustep-make though, so it will get automatically
> updated for the filesystem changes.  You call it, and gnustep-make will make 
> sure
> to look in the right library locations.
> 
> PS: We could do this with standard variables (rather than functions), but 
> functions
> have a more familiar syntax, and it looks like all GNU makes in the last 5 
> years or so
> support them, so we should probably start using them.

Well I guess the approach would work but
- the variables still need to take into account the non-flattened
configuration (not sure show to do that with the variable approach
without duplicating the block) and
- this search would be executed for /every/ make invocation instead of
once during configure.

But I see that other projects that don't yet already need ./configure
for other purposes like GDL2 would profit from this approach.

Also I think the order should be according to precedence i.e.

GNUSTEP_FIND_LIBRARY = $(strip $(wildcard $(addsuffix $(strip $(1)).so, \
$(GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
$(GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
$(GNUSTEP_NETWORK_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib \
$(GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT)/Library/Libraries/lib)))

So, do you have suggestion on how to handle the
LIBRARY_COMBO/GNUSTEP_TARGET_DIR or will it be function approach?

Cheers,
David