Re: Extension packaging

[Manuel Collado]

El 10/05/2022 a las 6:52, pjfarley3@earthlink.net escribió:
> > <pjfarley3@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> I was not lobbying for gawk to distribute them, nor did I intend to lobby
> for that idea, but I did not say so explicitly.  Mea culpa.
>
> Why can't gawkextlib be like CPAN then?  AFAIK CPAN doesn't require the user
> to recompile the main function code.  No one has to recompile perl when they
> download a CPAN module they wish to use.

Well, CPAN (or CTAN) mostly distribute Perl (or TeX) sources. Perhaps 
precompiled to intermediate bytecode.

This is not the case of Gawkextlib. Gawk extensions are not GAWK source 
snippets. They are C sources that must be compiled to native binaries of 
every target platform to be usable, exactly like the C sources of gawk 
itself.

This is why extension binaries should/could be distributed as part of 
the Linux or other OS distros, like the gawk binaries. Or compiled by 
the interested users themselves.

> Perhaps the extension API architecture is the issue, apparently requiring
> tight integration with the main gawk code?

Yes. Gawk extensions are in fact extensions of the internal gawk core C 
sources.

> Apologies for my ignorance in these matters if I have misunderstood how
> gawk's extension API works.

No problem. Thanks for your interest.

Regards.

--
Manuel Collado - http://mcollado.z15.es