Response files

["Jérôme M. Berger"]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Walter Bright wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> 'Round here we say "maassa maan tavalla", which is probably something
>> like "When in Rome, do like the Romans do".
>>
>> Makefiles aren't just a C(++) thing. Unix has a culture of its own,
>> Windows (I wouldn't say have a culture, but still) does it another
>> way. So do we import the Unix way to Windows or the other way around?
>> I'd go with the Romans in Rome.
>>
>> If there were a vote (outside of this NG!!) with D users, probably
>> there are more folks who write in D /and/ in C or another language /on
>> their own/ OS, than folks who write D apps (big enough to need
>> makefiles) for both Windows and Linux.
> 
> 
> There is no standard for makefiles, I've run across dozens of different
> make programs that use different syntax and have different extensions.
> So, if you're going to have the same makefile across systems, you have
> to start with finding a make program that is fairly identical across
> those systems.
> 
> Then you have the \ vs / problems. Some people assure me that Windows
> now works flawlessly with /, but that simply isn't so. I keep running
> into odd cases where it doesn't, so I don't use / on Windows.
> 
> File name case sensitivity differs.
> 
> The command line utilities called by makefiles differ in their names,
> switches, and how they work.
> 
> .o on Linux, .obj on Windows.
> 
> nothing on Linux, .exe on Windows.
> 
> .a on Linux, .lib on Windows.
> 
> It just goes on and on. You could try and parameterize all of it, but
> then the makefile becomes an inscrutable mess. You could have scripts
> generate makefiles, embed scripts in the makefiles, etc., but is this
> really worthwhile? It's just a makefile. I spend almost zero time on
> them. I like them simple even if that means they're more verbose.

	Or use a build system that abstracts all the differences for you. I
use SCons all the time to write software that works on both Linux
and Windows and I have none of the problems you describe:
 - SCons is released for both Linux and Windows (and MacOS) and is
the same on all platforms;
 - All my file names are in lower case, ever (this has nothing to do
with the make tool btw);
 - SCons uses '/' as the path delimiter everywhere and translates
them appropriately;
 - In SCons, you only specify the core file name and SCons adds the
required prefix and suffix (eg object => object.o/object.obj,
program => program/program.exe, library => liblibrary.a/library.lib);
 - Plus SCons is able to do parallel compilations which make isn't
really (the '-j' option is broken on all the make implementations I
know).

	All the complexity and the parametrization is handled internally by
SCons so the "makefiles" are both simple *and* terse ;)

		Jerome

PS: Though I've never used it, "cmake" is supposed to offer most of
the same benefits as SCons.

- --
mailto:jeberger at free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger at jabber.fr
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAknF6lgACgkQd0kWM4JG3k9KfQCdGc1BQJiuWPimuX13fz4dC8sT
kTkAnjE58mPisayr+EgE9FDWhFvPFD2f
=uP45
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----