Anthony Carrico wrote:
> I understand your frustration. In my last message I said that I
> thought the the Makefile install/uninstall user interface was an
> unfortunate accident of history, but it is easy enough to comply with
> this interface, and it would provide our users with a standard
> install/uninstall experience.
My standard install/uninstall experience is that when I want to
install something (from source), I won't have the libraries I need and
the scripts will tell me this step by step only and mostly only
referring to a single library file for which I have to figure out
which package contains it..
When I want to uninstall, the Makefile either does not have such a
rule, or it does not uninstall all the files I've installed. Anyhow,
on every major system there is package manager of some kind that takes
care of uninstalling (thus, I don't have to keep all the config files
floating around just in case I want to uninstall something later) and
on systems that lack this package manager there are administrators who
are sophisticated enough to deal with non-standard install/uninstall
procedures.
I am not sure if it is a good idea to carry on with something just
because it's been done that way for a long time. configure and make
do a good job for C files as C files are heavily architecture
dependant. This is not the case for scsh (Except for the floating
points? :-).
I don't see a reason to use make, except for tradition. (Furthermore,
this will add an unnecessary dependency to the scsh libraries in
general. But this is probably a minor issue.) Make is good to
compile C source files but doesn't make sense to me for scsh source
files. The only thing that should be covered in one way or another
(in the future) are dependencies, e.g. among scsh libraries, and make
is not made for this. We would use make as a host for (bash!?) shell
scripts.
> "Shall we try an iteration of the current packaging proposal for the
> major scsh libraries?"
I vote yes. (I think no one could really object this, could she?)
> "Shall we design our own user interface for installation and
> uninstallation, or shall we follow the gnu coding standards
> (configure, make install, and make uninstall)"
I vote for a own interface. The gnu coding standards makes sense for
C files but not for scsh files (for me). And if there is a scsh
package that needs to compile C files, this library can handle this by
itself in its own way (Hm, hopefully nobody will get confused when she
finds a Makefile in a scsh library source directory...)
> Developers who are committed to the standards won't be forced to
> choose between them and the scsh conventions.
By the way, I am wondering what Perl developers think. Perl does not
use the gnu coding standard, either: perl Makefile.PL; make; make
test.
(What do our "benevolent dictators" think?)
Andreas.
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