Re: cons for modular packages

[Gary Oberbrunner]

>>>>> "AH" == Axel Hecht <address@hidden> writes:

  AH> I was exactly looking for the feature tests, and it would be
  AH> great to have some pretty setup for this. In autoconf there are
  AH> alot of useful macros to generate these feature tests, and cons
  AH> might want to have such a convenience as well.  This may go so
  AH> far as to whether the compiler accepts a definition file or does
  AH> not (a neat feature in the mozilla build system).

  AH> Most important, autoconf has a great deal of ready to use
  AH> macros, and getting people to change might be easier with a
  AH> smooth path to do so. All those packages (gtk, gnome, libidl..)
  AH> with foo_config to determine compile and link options might be
  AH> worth a way to support in cons as well.

All of this should be done in a regular perl package, independent of
cons.  There's no need for dependency analysis, name substitution,
repositories or anything else that cons provides.  (In fact I'm almost
surprised there isn't something like this already.)  Hooking it up to
cons would be trivial -- just more perl.

That said, it sure would be a nice thing to have, and cons users
(among others) would be happy to use it, I bet!

-- 
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Gary Oberbrunner                address@hidden
GenArts, Inc.                   Tel: 617-492-2888
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