Re: Specifying a target in a GPRBuild project file?

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:32:11 +0200, Georg Bauhaus  
<rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit:

> 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,

Actually, GPRBuild is a generalisation of GNATMake, and is not required if  
you only use Ada and a single compiler. In the latter case, GNATMake is  
enough. The core remains the project file, and the project file is common  
to both. So if GPRBuild tends to be a kind of AutoConf, that could be said  
of GNATMake too.

> 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?

In this case, just use a classic Makefile and describe in a README file,  
what may have to be tweaked in it (compiler paths, names, options, etc).

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

There is nothing monstrous with it, it just fix compilers paths and  
options, and default project files attributes and variables. That's just  
like binding and interfacing. The issue may be when it does not behave as  
expected, but that can be said of the compiler too (I personally have more  
blocking issues with GNAT bug boxes than with GPRBuild which never been  
blocking to me).


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University