Re: [xougen] Build System

[Jonathan Walther]

On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 03:25:28PM +0000, Herbert Snorrason wrote:
> > Jonathan had the idea a while ago to create a LISP build system
> > and mentioned it on the IRC channel.

> Lisp is immensely powerful, very 'beautiful' (for some definition of the 
> word), and incredibly rare. Installing a Common Lisp implementation for 
> the sole purpose of building Xouvert is going to piss some people off. 
> That's the only flaw I can see in the idea.

Right.  That's why we'll be using a Scheme dialect implemented by a
small, standalone interpreter that happens to include bindings for the
POSIX system calls, and Common Lisp style macros.  Hygeinic macros are
just too limited to even consider a Scheme dialect that only supports
them, and not the more powerful Common Lisp macros.

By using this small standalone interpreter we can include it in the X
sources, compile it with a small shell script (thus not requiring make
to be present) and then use it to compile the rest of the server.

> > Maybe we could take advantage of the branching system in arch
> > and make a seperate branch around which we could construct a LISP build 
> > system.

> Yeah. Doing the make system reconstruction would be most sensible in a 
> seperate branch, whichever way we choose.

Absolutely!  This is how arch was designed.  We don't commit a patchset
to the main branch until it is in working order.  That makes it easier
to point and say "this particular set of changes does THIS, or does
THAT".  By using a separate branch, you can still do "backups" of your
work every day, without having to commit to the main branch.

Cheers!

Jonathan

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