Re: mkoctfile urgently needs attention before Octave 3.6.0 release

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

2011/12/29 Lukas Reichlin <address@hidden>:
>
> On 29.12.2011, at 17:52, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>
>> 2011/12/29 Lukas Reichlin <address@hidden>:
>>> On 29.12.2011, at 14:47, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>>>> 2011/12/29 Lukas Reichlin <address@hidden>:
>>>>> In order to circumvent these problems, I propose the following
>>>>> solution that works from both Octave prompt and OS shell: Addition
>>>>> of a new option "--link-all-libs" to mkoctfile
>>>>
>>>> No, this is not the solution. We need to understand the actual
>>>> problem. You are proposing a heavy-handed solution because you don't
>>>> understand the actual problem, and neither do we. We should work to do
>>>> that instead of trying to revert to an old barbaric method of linking
>>>> that happened to work for your case.
>>>>
>>>> Marco has already proposed a solution that seems to work for other
>>>> cases. We are only missing yours.
>>>
>>> I'm glad that Marco sent me a patch. But it's just a workaround for
>>> the problem, not a solution. It's not good when you have to resort
>>> to the shell, query some configuration variables and then feeding
>>> the result to the next call of mkoctfile.
>>
>> This *is* a good solution. It's not something we invented for Octave.
>> For example, pkg-config also does the same thing for many other Unix
>> packages. It's also convenient. You could for example do
>>
>>    mkoctfile foo.cc $(mkocfile -p BLAS_LIBS)
>>
>> This is just how shells work.
>>
>>> It should be possible from the Octave prompt and without tedious
>>> fiddling with intermediate variables.
>>
>> I don't see a huge priority to recreate a Unix shell in Octave, so if
>> calling mkoctfile.m involves using an intermediate variable, I don't
>> see a problem. You don't even need the intermediate variable. For
>> example, you could do
>>
>>    mkoctfile("foo.cc", mkoctfile("-p","BLAS_LIBS"))
>>
>> which is roughly equivalent to its corresponding Unix shell call
>> above.
>>
>> The only bug remaining is figuring out what linking flags you need on
>> McIntosh OS 10, and why mkoctfile -p LAPACK_LIBS isn't producing those
>> flags.
>
> I meant that it should work with only one call to mkoctfile. Something like
>
>    mkoctfile foo.cc --link-to-blas --link-to-lapack

Why does this make a difference? Would you prefer if instead the
variables were printed by octave-config instead of mkoctfile? What's
the problem with calling mkoctfile twice?

- Jordi G. H.