Re: [Premake-users] Some thoughts on backends

[<pu...@us...>]

J. Perkins wrote:
> On 2/1/06, Jens Thee=DF <pu...@us...> wrote:
>> So what I propose is this: a plugin system for backends. These could b=
e
>> shared libraries or maybe just lua scripts.
>=20
> In theory, I like this idea, and I have thought about it in the past.
> It is reasonably easy to implement.
>=20
  > So...I am going to continue to ship Premake as a single, all-inclusiv=
e
> file. However, I am not opposed to the idea of enabling end-user
> addons, with the understanding that popular addons will be merged into
> the core, and not the other way around. If you would like to propose a
> system, I will consider implementing it. Is that reasonable?

That will be perfect. I started using premake on small hobby projects,=20
but there are two requirements I have before using it at work:

* Easy to do custom targets. Especially the ability to easily modifiy
   the "gnu" target is a must for me (or rather, my boss).
* Support for writing target generators using some templating engine
   (this is not a strong requirement).

>>     * Writing backends in plain C is awkward. Why not use a template
>>       engine like Velocity, or Lua with Text Template
>>       (http://lua-users.org/wiki/TextTemplate)?
>=20
> I would love to use a template engine, if I could figure out a way to
> embed everything into a single executable, for the reasons described
> above. Any takers?

Did you get my second mail on this topic? Attached was an expirmental=20
lua script using the Text Template engine (Expand.lua) to produce a=20
simple codeblocks project file.  Velocity wouldn't work actually, as it=20
is a java library, but I'm sure something similar must exist for C or C++=
.

I poked around the premake sources to see how easy it would be to=20
support lua scripts as target generators. The major thing to do I've=20
seen so far is to make the packages defined in premake.lua available to=20
the generator script. The script itself could be included into=20
premake.exe by transforming it into a .h file (optionally compiling it=20
to bytecode first). Could you make a function like script_init() which=20
defines a global "packages" table containing all the packages defined by=20
the premake.lua scripts? I'm not yet that familiar with the lua C api.=20
Then I could more easily try out this "generating targets using lua"=20
approach.

Jens