Compiling with gdc vs. gdmd

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 05-04-2012 23:30, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On 05/04/12 20:56, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>> *Confused*. The way I see it, this situation is exactly equivalent to
>> having a
>> readily-available Autotools script that relies on a proprietary
>> Autotools?
>
> No, because it's _contained within_ the build script. Everything within
> the build script has to comply with the license terms.
>
>> I don't quite understand this, though. The fact that Waf sits in a source
>> control repository shouldn't really matter at all. It could as well
>> sit anywhere
>> on your system; it just isn't designed for that.
>>
>> Is the problem here that the GPL considers Waf part of this whole
>> thing because
>> you generally ship the Waf binary in source distributions of your
>> software?
>
> I think that's about it. It's contained in the build script, so it's
> considered part of the build script; and therefore subject to the same
> terms and conditions.
>
> By comparison, a Makefile doesn't _contain_ make; make is a separate
> piece of software that's used to _interpret_ the Makefile.

OK, I understand what you're saying, but I think there's a 
misunderstanding here: With Waf, you *do* write a build script like you 
do with e.g. Make, and this so-called wscript sits outside Waf. See for 
example: https://github.com/lycus/mci/blob/master/wscript

The Waf binary loads up this script and executes it when you issue build 
commands, much like Make does for Makefiles.

-- 
- Alex