Re: Construct file extension

[Johan Holmberg]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Steven Knight wrote:
>
> I think there's an even more important reason to have a different
> extension (.cons).  Even though the Construct file is a Perl script, you
> *don't* want it executed directly by Perl.  You want to register that
> cons.bat or cons.pl execute it.
>

I don't understand what you mean by the last sentence above.
(but I agree that we should avoid ".pl")

Why would you want to do anything other than:

    C:\some\dir> cons foo.exe

What's the point of associating a program like "cons.bat" or
"cons.pl" with a Construct file ?

1) You can't "click" on the Construct file in a GUI, since you
normally have to supply arguments to cons also (beside the
"implicit"  Construct file itself).

2) Would you like to be able to write

        C:\some\dir> Construct.cons foo.exe

   instead of

        C:\some\dir> cons foo.exe

   ????

I don't see the point ....

> > At the end of my previous mail I proposed that we should have the
> > possibility to set whatever extension and icon one wants to avoid snatching
> > Acme extension.
> >
> > So:
> >
> > - Cons work as before, icon and extension set or not
> > - In the environment we add CONS_EXTENSION=.whatever_you_like
> > - each one fixes the icon problem on his own
> >
> > A last problem:
> > Not having a standard extension makes sharing of construct files harder
> > (well typing a -f construct.yae harder). The solution is:
> >
> > CONS_EXTENSION=.whatever_you_like, .whatever_the_other_guy_likes
>
> Sounds good.
>

I have to disagree again.
I do *not* think that an extension for Construct files should be
configurable. As Nadim mentioned this would "make sharing of
construct files harder". I think this is a very strong argument
against a configurable extension.

Cons has been carefully designed to be able to reliably reproduce a
build. (eg. the PATH has to be set explicitly). I think it would be
very ironic (=bad) if Cons would suddenly fail to find a Construct
file just because someone named their Construct file
"Construct.odd_name".

If anything should be done at all to this extension-issue
I think it should be as Steven wrote in his first reply:

> [...] I'd be willing to integrate a change that would looks for
> Construct.xxx as well as Construct.

/Johan Holmberg