Re: [Gnucap-devel] Autotools build system

[al davis]

On Sunday 21 June 2009, David Fang wrote:
>       Would the user's experience feel any different if modules
> were always built separately, but always loaded on startup?
> (as opposed to being linked in statically as say, a dependent
> library.)  If the common case is to have a core set of
> plug-ins loaded, then you could provide a command-line option
> to skip loading them, in the rare event that they are not
> wanted.

If you think only of Linux, BSD, and similar systems, I agree.

Now consider MS-Windows, not on a network but perhaps a student 
computer, or maybe it is on a network but doesn't have gnucap 
installed.  One reason for having a version with a set of stuff 
built-in (as it is now) is that a simple executable can be 
useful.  As a former college professor, I see a need for this 
for handing out to students.  I also see a need for it as a 
"demo".

To see what it is like, look at either Make1 or Makefile.am and 
see the list of which ones would move.  You might even try a 
build with all of them moved out.  

Remove the lines:
$(D_SRCS) \
$(BM_SRCS) \
$(C_SRCS) \
$(S_SRCS) \
$(LANG_SRCS) \
$(FUNC_SRCS) \

If you are using the development build system, just type "make" 
after doing this.  If you are running the autoconf build system 
..  now you tell me what you have to do to make the change take 
effect.

What you are left with is a program with only one command, the 
one to load plugins.  You will need to do control-D to quit, 
because even the quit command isn't there.

If a module is loaded by default, and you want to replace it, 
all you need to do is load the one you want.


> You can always add such an executable to Makefile.am:
> if WIN32
> bin_PROGRAMS += gnucap-win32-demo
> endif
> ...
>
> and link it statically.

I thought Makefile.am was supposed to not require that stuff.

> The patch I submitted introduced a 'dlopen' command that you
> can call without the module's file extension, thanks to
> lt_dlopenext(). To load-dir, you just need to traverse a
> DIR/dirent
> <sys/dir.h>/<sys/dirent.h>.  Not sure what the equivalent is
> for Windows. I've been testing on an old Mac.  :)

I will look.