Have Win DMD use gmake instead of a separate DMMake makefile?

[Joakim]

On Tuesday, 13 August 2013 at 10:09:11 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On 13 August 2013 10:55, Joakim <joakim at airpost.net> wrote:
>> would only apply to the gmake binary.  The GPL is a very badly 
>> written
>> license, but I think it has been generally established that 
>> you can
>> distribute tools like gmake or g++ with your own code and that 
>> doesn't make
>> your own code have to be GPL, as long as gmake/g++ are only 
>> used to
>> process/compile your code and your own code doesn't integrate 
>> the source for
>> gmake/g++, ie gdc, which is almost never the case.
>>
>
> Pardon?  (I don't understand what point you are trying to put 
> across
> about gdc, so I think it might be wrong ;-)
You seem to have a lot of problems reading what's written. ;) The 
point was that if you are distributing dmd and phobos source with 
GPL binary tools like gmake or g++, which are then only compiled 
by those binaries, there is no problem with the GPL.  You only 
need to provide the source for gmake and g++.  If you were 
distributing gdc, which actually integrates with the same 
compiler backend source as g++, then you have to include the 
source for the gdc frontend and whatever other glue files it 
uses.  Since most source code doesn't integrate with the gcc 
compiler backend, the GPL licensing of gmake/g++ is not a problem 
for most projects, including dmd.

On Tuesday, 13 August 2013 at 16:11:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 11:55:12AM +0200, Joakim wrote:
> [...]
>> Personally, I like the D-based build system idea.  Distribute
>> dmd/phobos with a D-based build tool like dub, which has been
>> compiled ahead of time for each supported platform and will 
>> compile
>> D for you, if you want.  Of course, this means that you'll 
>> still
>> need to maintain makefiles on the D build machines that will 
>> build
>> dub for the D maintainers to distribute, but it isolates all 
>> the
>> complexity of makefiles from end users, so they don't have to 
>> touch
>> any of that stuff.  Whether that ease of use is worth the extra
>> effort, I don't know.
>
> There's no need to maintain any makefiles once the D build tool 
> is
> usable. As long as you have a working binary of dmd that can 
> compile the
> tool, that's good enough.
I thought you'd still need the makefiles around for the rare 
occasion when you bootstrap to a new platform, as the D-based 
build tool won't compile there initially.  Perhaps I'm wrong, I 
don't know much about all the vagaries involved with 
bootstrapping.

On Tuesday, 13 August 2013 at 18:10:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/13/2013 2:55 AM, Joakim wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 13 August 2013 at 08:30:26 UTC, Walter Bright 
>> wrote:
>>> On 8/12/2013 11:48 PM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>> On 2013-08-13 02:42, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Is is possible from a licensing standpoint to just 
>>>>> distribute a copy of
>>>>> gmake built by gnuwin?
>>>>
>>>> I don't see why we couldn't do that. It's a completely 
>>>> separate tool and
>>>> shouldn't "infect" anything else. We might need to accompany 
>>>> it with a license
>>>> file and a link to the source code to be on the safe side.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Again, read my reply to Brad in this thread.
>>
>> Presumably you are referring to this quote, which does not 
>> show up as a reply?
>
> Nobody seems to have read it or be able to find it, it has no 
> replies, so I quote it here:
I think we've all seen that post.  The problem is that Andrei, 
and Jacob later, were only asking about licensing issues with 
gmake, but your pasted response to Brad didn't mention licensing. 
  You're probably right that distributing gmake is problematic on 
technical and "ease of use" grounds.  I was just making a narrow 
point that the GPL likely isn't an issue, which is what Andrei 
and Jacob asked about.