Re: [swarm-hackers] header directory structure

[Scott Christley]

On Jul 8, 2008, at 5:55 PM, Bill Northcott wrote:

> On 09/07/2008, at 10:25 AM, Scott Christley wrote:
> > > Within Swarm and Swarm model code we have #include <defobj/ 
> > > defobj.h> which is found through the '-I /Library/Swarm.framework/ 
> > > Versions/Current/include' option setup by configure.
> >
> > Right, which is exactly the problem I'm talking about...   #import  
> > <Swarm/defobj.h> is not the same as #include <defobj/defobj.h>, so  
> > we have two different ways to include in headers, making Swarm apps  
> > not source code identical across the two systems.  My suggestion  
> > was to standardize on #import <Swarm/defobj.h>
>
> Your message seems to have crossed mine in the cloud.  My framework  
> layout does not remove the need for a -I option in a Cocoa/framework  
> model build.  But we could ship an Xcode template that includes this.

This is just the flip side of the same coin, instead of saying "the  
rest of the world should be changed to conform to MacOS", we are  
saying that the Mac world has to conform to Unix conventions.   
Furthermore the -I option has to be readjusted whenever the framework  
gets moved to a new location, so you end up throwing away one of the  
nice features of frameworks.

We actually have more control over this in the Unix world, where  
people are use to having to deal with include directories and library  
directories in makefiles, and we provide a Makefile.appl that handles  
all the Swarm particulars, so we can just roll those changes into  
Makefile.appl and the user doesn't need to change their code.

To be more explicit, the directory structure could look something like  
this:

include/Swarm/
        defobj -> ../
        activity -> ../
        collections -> ../
        etc.

then adding a "-I$SWARMHOME/include/Swarm" into Makefile.appl and  
everything works.  My opinion is that this is the less onerous solution.


> Perhaps we could remove the need for the -I flag by having the  
> #include within header files be relative.  So in defobj.h you would  
> have #include objc/objc.h without the sort of redundant <>.  After  
> all objc.h is strictly a private header.  This means altering Swarm  
> sources but not users' model code.

This is how I have it right now by using the quotation marks ("")  
instead of the arrows (<>) but its not a very good solution as it too  
requires adding -I options to Makefile.appl, and it has a greater  
potential for name conflicts with other source code packages.

Scott