[M3devel] propose "output root" to replace shipping

[Rodney M. Bates]

On 03/24/2015 03:19 AM, Jay K wrote:
> The point is, kind of to make it better, by making it worse.
> Or worse by making it better.
>
>
> In particular, "ship" would go away.
> Files would /always be overwritten right away/.
>
>
> If you don't want this -- and indeed /sometimes /you don't, you
> would change the output root to a new empty/nonexistent directory,
> possibly copying all of the previous into the new.
>
>
>
> cm3 and its dependencies would require special attention.
> In particular, for sharing violations on .dlls, we'd rename away and copy back.
> Does that then work on all systems? It works on NT.
> I'm betting most Posix systems "just work" and AIX requires either the same as NT
> or can't be made to work so easily.
>
>
> If the outputs are bad, you would have to restore from backup, for things like cm3/m3core/libm3 (and
> basically just them). For anything not used by cm3, just edit the source and recompile again.
>
>
> You could view this as taking away an escape hatch.
> But a simpler easier to understand escape hatch remains.
>
>
> And the escape hatch is really only critical for cm3 and its dependents.
> Or "build tools" maybe more generally, like klex, kyacc, m3bundle.
>
>
> Is this still the mailing list to use, or something new with git?
>
>
> Now -- another use of "ship" is "install" not on the same machine as compile.
> For this, I propose, just un-tar-gz or unzip instead, or recursive copy if not archived.
>
>
> A background point here is -- have fewer different directory layouts.
> Instead of ship rearranging stuff, just arrange stuff when you link in the first place.

I really like this idea.  Things might need to be slightly different when it comes to
installed  copies of library interfaces.

>
>
> This would also argue that the source tree and install tree should be more-similar/identical
> except for the root, but I'm reluctant to rearrange the source..even to lift up the "src"
> leaves by one, in order to keep the tree diffable against old trees.
>
>
>   - Jay
>
>

-- 
Rodney Bates
rodney.m.bates at acm.org