Re: [MacPerl-Porters] Configure.mpw

[Peter Prymmer <pvhp@best.com>]

On 19 Mar 1999, Matthias Neeracher wrote:

> In article <199903180724.XAA10127@shell8.ba.best.com>, Peter Prymmer <pvhp@best.com> writes:
> > While I have not yet built MacPerl from source yet (actually I don't
> > have a copy of MWC :-) I have been going over the build instructions 
> > more closely than ever before.
> 
> Cool!
> 
> > One thing odd that I noted was the
> > admonishment on MPP&E to name one's MPW_Shell directory :MPW:
> 
> Well, does anybody ever name it differently? :-)

Er, that would be me.  I seemed to have named them things like
:MPW_Feb_1998: and :MPW-GM_March_1999:, so  I'll put the check in :-)

> I've never tested with any other name, but offhand I can't recall any
> hardcoded references to it anyway.

Apparently(?) it matters to dmake (???)
 
> > (I realize that *if* I had a working compoiler I could simply test this
> > with a build - alas my budget for such things is somewhat limited :-).
> 
> > At any rate I have started working on a Mac port of Configure that I am
> > calling Configure.mpw (for lack of a better name) that checks the MANIFEST
> > file and the build environment for necessary MPW tools, libs, headers, etc.
> > Though I note that Tcl is setup to build using Applescripts it seemed
> > advantageous to write Perl's Mac script in MPW - does that sound reasonable?
> 
> Well, I'm surprised that you would have the *time* in your budget for such an
> enterprise :-) The task seems potentially extremely useful, but doing it in
> MPW shell language seems a very difficult way of accomplishing it. On the
> other hand, MPW might not be all that much worse than /bin/sh, except that it
> doesn't support any here documents.

(time-heh) :=}

I don't mind multiple echo's and grouping them () with I/O redirection.
What I do miss are functions or even goto statements for calling repeated
code with only slightly different parameters on each pass.

BTW anyone wanting to pick up a few very good cross-platform shell tips
need look no further than perl's Configure - it knocks the socks off of
anything autoconf ever generated (although autoconf can be coaxed into
generating DCL :-).

> > So I am curious: where will the Mac specific files wind up in the perl tar ball?
> > Will there be a folder :mac: (er, mac/)?
> 
> Yes, that's the plan.

Great.

> > PerlStub         (136k stub lib???)
> 
> Sounds about right. It exports more than 100 symbols for 2 different
> architectures.

OK.  I think there are also .gif files in the perl tar ball, this and the
resource files wouldn't be the first non-text files in there.

> > Does that list look about right?  Would it be OK to assume that a Configure script
> > would need to Move or Duplicate those files from the :mac: directory into the
> > main perl5.005_5n build directory prior to the build?
> 
> That question is not quite settled yet, but it sounds like a reasonable plan.

OK, Configure.mpw is still pretty maleable at this stage.

> > While I haven't diffed things yet, some files will obviously need patching in 
> > the main perl5* directory (e.g. run.c).
> 
> All the Mac specific parts are already conditionalized on "macintosh".

Yes I saw the preproc directives - it looks straightforward.

> > Also, is it reasonable to assume that the stuff in :MacPerl_Src:macperl: will
> > still be distributed separately from the perl tar ball?
> 
> Yes, and so will the contents of ext/

OK.  I note that both VMS and OS/2 have some rather platform specific
extension building that they do as part of the one perl tar ball, so I
don't think *some* Mac specific extensions would be scoffed at (provided
they are not too big of course).  If we can't greatly reduce the number of
source code kits that need to be downloaded we might at least try to make
the auxiliary ones smaller.

Thanks for the feedback.

Peter Prymmer



==== Want to unsubscribe from this list?
==== Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to macperl-porters-request@macperl.org