Re: [swarm-hackers] header directory structure

[Scott Christley]

On Jul 7, 2008, at 12:55 AM, Bill Northcott wrote:

> There are two benefits with the framework system, one is the  
> packaging, the second is the versioning system.  So multiple  
> versions can be installed.  Static linking is always to the current  
> version, but runtime linking uses the original (older) versions.

I will add a third benefit, localized resource files.  This is used in  
another project I work on, BioCocoa, where nucleotide to amino acid  
translation tables are saved in files.  It's easy for the framework to  
access the file without playing the "where did the file get installed"  
game.


> The behaviour Scott is describing for the headers comes from using '- 
> F Swarm' preprocessor flag.  If you are using a makefile you can  
> just ignore this and use '-I /Library/Swarm.framework/Headers' which  
> will work without needing the <Swarm/defobj.h> form.  You can do  
> this by using script steps in Xcode to run a standard makefile  
> build.  That is what I have always done.  The  <Swarm/defobj.h> form  
> is only needed if you uses the Xcode build system (jam ?) and tell  
> it to use the framework.

True but then why use the framework architecture only to circumvent  
it.  If I'm gonna go through the effort to build a framework, I want  
end-users to use it just like any other framework and not have to do  
any special.


So I think the best option then comes down to keeping the GNU/Linux  
directory structure and moving it one level down into a Swarm  
directory, then add a -I flag to Makefile.appl so that existing code  
works without changes.   They can use the <Swarm/defobj.h> format if  
they want, but they are not required to change their source code.  Mac  
apps will have to use the <Swarm/defobj.h> format.

Scott