Re: Specifying a target in a GPRBuild project file?

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 27.04.13 10:48, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:37:37 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:
>
>> See: http://docs.adacore.com/gprbuild-docs/html/gprbuild_ug.html#Gprbuild
>> This will tell you about how GPRBuild and GPRConfig works together.
>
> Huh, comparing to GPRBuild user's guide even Ada RM reads like a nursery
> rhyme. (:-))
>
>> See: `/usr/share/gprconfig/*.xml`
>> This will tell you how GPRConfig searchs for compilers and select the
>> appropriate one.
>
> This is what I suspected. I am glad I didn't step in it.


Anyone who does not need to specialize in configuration business is
a happy person.

Alas, the evolution of configuration tools such as GPRsomething
ultimately develops symptoms and patterns of sophistication that
predictably culminate in some equivalence class of autoconf,
even if you wanted to attribute higher levels of "engineering".

The result: If you are not a member of the current in-group of
conf-savvy consultants, dont't configure. Instead, chose systems that
make the default configurations work. GTD here translates directly
into anti-configurability. Programs are again less portable than
need be:

Just imagine some portable combined Ada/C++ program source text that has
become the subject of GPRbuild (alternatively, to whatever Atego's
Rational thing does, etc). Will porting the Ada/C++ program still be
both practical and cost efficient in the presence of having to port
one proprietary (open-source) configuration text to another proprietary
(maybe-not-open-source) configuration text?

The acceptance of this hodgepodge is a little puzzling as configuration
business is so akin to programming, and systematic programming at that!

Looking over language borders, after Maven had taken over the "lower level"
configuration solutions for Java software, it was later taken over by
2nd level configuration tools that will control the 1st level Maven.
Programmers may specialize in teaching these tools, or at least learn
how to use them. This works for a few years or so, until the next fashion
does it a little differently.

Who is financing this misguided use of brain power that creates
monstrosities of configuration to live in a costly zoo?