Re: [MacPerl] XS Modules, porting, MMP

[Matthew Langford <langfml [at] eng [dot] auburn [dot] edu>]

On Tue, 23 Nov 1999, Arved Sandstrom wrote:

> Agreed. My main motivation for doing the tutorials (on the MacPerl Pages)
> on XS and SWIG were to illustrate the process and get more folks doing
> their own XS. I don't know if I succeeded.

It got me up through compiling at least one module.  Thanks for the work.
You might be able to produce a much simpler doc for the case where someone
is merely trying to compile someone else's XS file.  A lot of the
treatment is about learning how to code XS files on the Mac, but all a
binary builder needs is xsubpp, adding the right libraries, and compiling.


> Certainly the stuff comes out too quickly. Apart from a few specific
> modules I personally only react (now) to a specific request. Some CPAN
> authors (naming no names) are way too prolific, especially when it comes
> to introducing features or just rewriting their code, in the matter of new
> versions. Just my opinion.

Yeah, that's a pain in the Aas.  :)


> ActiveState doesn't track CPAN XS all that well, either, for the same
> reasons. It's a lot of work trying to figure out what is worth hacking and
> what isn't. Life would be a lot easier if XS packages had some kind of
> Makefile flag called IS_PORTABLE, or something. :-)

Agreed.  I figured automating however few easy modules would at least make
them available as fast as the authors cared to revise.  Without bothering
our most precious commodity, the volunteers.  They/you/we, in turn, could
spend time where it is most needed, doing actual porting, and suggesting
portability changes to module authors so more builds work out of the box.

If anyone cared, the system could be special-cased for popular builds.
The build server could maintain CW or MPW projects or makefiles for these
modules, and plug in the new source when requested.  

I suppose one could even go to the trouble of writing a few conversion
passes to find common issues and replace them with more portable code.  
But of course it would be better to feed changes back to the author.  
Still, if the author of a main module/bundle like LWP or CPAN wouldn't
make changes, an intelligent diff/patch would still allow the build server
to automate creating a new version.

Then we could laugh and toss our heads at the ActiveState users, who
despite all the money lavished on their platform still couldn't keep up
with us.  :)


--
MattLangford 


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