Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <ole-hjalmar.kristensen@substitute_employer_here.com> wrote:
: One way to combat the combinatorial explosion of platforms * compiler
: * library is to explicitly test for the features of the environment
: you really need to know, not assume something because of a particular
: platform/compiler. This is the approach typically used by projects
: using the 'configure' tool.

Only to some extent is this test possible with this approach.
Some GNU software authors must frankly tell you that unless
you use a know combination of compiler (i.e. gcc ;-) and OS (i.e.,
Unix or Wunix),
  "... non-default environments can expose bugs in the system header
   files, crippling compilation in _very_ non-obvious ways.  Because
   of that, we define them only on well-tested architectures where we
   know they will work."
(from wget config-post.h "1.9+cvs-dev")

And promtly como --c --strict lets me translate the source,
but without --remarks, it does not tell me that usleep is not
defined. So for a double argument to usleep which has been
manually range checked, the conversion to long is not done...

The configure approach has always been a nightmare for me the moment
I had to deviate from the assumptions that the configure script
is known to verify.

: I would really like to have some standard configuration tool which
: could take such parameters as input and produce a version of the
: system tailored to the environment in which it is to be compiled and
: run. 

Yes. But do you think it will ever be produced by programmers (who
like to creatively write programs)?
Collegues tell me that CM is tedious, always the same, automatic,
boring, wast of time, etc. etc., they want a DWIM procedure.
And when I answer that configuration
management, installation procedures, installation testing routines
and so one are 50% of software development, I'm on my own.

So the trick will be to turn CM into a programming problem, so
programmers and mathematicians will be instrested in solving it.


-- Georg