Re: [Texmacs-dev] [Announce] nogencc-0.8

[David Allouche]

On Tuesday 07 May 2002 17:34, Joris van der Hoeven wrote:
> On Tue, 7 May 2002, David Allouche wrote:

> >   New experimental make target ALL_IN_ONE (fails).
>
> What is this supposed to mean?
> Please give a short explanation of the different targets.

That target compiles the whole program in one big compilation unit, the 
inclusion order is the same as for AGGREGATE inside gencc groups, the 
order of groups had not been given any particular thought.

I just noticed the compilation failed because of multiple definition. For 
this compilation style to work it would be necessary to modify the code. 
So just let it in as an experimental feature.

> >   New experimental make target STATIC_AGGREGATE (fails).
>
> Please fix these problems. Before that such important problems
> have been fixed, we cannot consider nogencc as sufficiently stable.

Well... I guess I have to learn about linking arcana...

> > About STATIC_AGGREGATE:
>
> You probably did not specify the linker options in the right order/way.
> I also don't understand why /lib/ld-linux.so.2 is being linked;
> this is a dynamic library, while you are building a static version!

So it is probably a stupid error indeed... I will try to find out.

> > About the static link problem in the official distribution, I WAS
> > using guile 1.4. Until someone brings me new information, I will
> > consider this issue out of my competence.
>
> Well, it is not in my competence either. I consider this to be
> a big problem on which you should try hard to solve.
> My experience tells me that it is very unlikely that an average user
> will help you on this problem in a reasonable delay. We cannot make
> TeXmacs instable until a friendly user ultimately shows up and
> solves the problem.

I could argue that STATIC compilation is not really that important, but I 
promised to stop arguing.

> When the above problems will be fixed, I will proceed as follows:
>
> 1. I try to compile the nogencc distribution on some other platforms
>    and let you fix possible problems.

Ok... Actually I sadly saw some configuration logic hard-coded in 
gendeps. I tried to backport some obvious things to the Makefile, but I 
think that things will break. I would really like to be able to do the 
tests myself. Maybe Savannah provides a compile farm?

> 2. Sync with TeXmacs-1.0.0.5 and freeze the C++ code:
>    I will not make any changes in the C++ code until
>    the nogencc problem has been solved.

I will care about merging. I do the merging with a very partially 
converted version, to minimize the delta between my version and the old 
official version. That way, the merging is easier. Moreover, if something 
breaks, I will be able to fix it faster if I do the merging myself.

Anyway I already look at the diffs of new versions of TeXmacs, so that is 
not a big additional expense of time for me.

> 3. I make a complete diff (I do not trust automatic rewriting) and
>    study all differences. If I find non trivial modifications in
>    the code, then I will ask you to fix these.

At this point, automatic rewriting demonstrably performs only trivial 
changes. I am willing to document it or develop helper tools so you 
can concentrate on changes I made by hand.

> 4. In the meantime you should adapt TeXmacs-misc too;
>    I will again make a complete diff for this too.

TeXmacs-misc do not seem to depend on gencc. I do understand what you 
want me to do. 

> 5. Validate nogencc in TeXmacs-1.0.0.6 or
>    temporarily invalidate nogencc if there are too many problems.
>
> 6. We will wait a few weeks/months for feedback on possible problems.
>    When I will be sufficiently confident that the change did not
>    break anything, then we will rediscuss the other changes that
>    you proposed.

Ok, so I will investigate the static linking issue and start working on 
the transformations on top of the nogencc branch. Now that I am confident 
in the stability of the code, I will keep it in sync with the official 
version.
-- 

                                  -- David --