Re: make check-exec-image failure

[Bruno H. <br...@cl...>]

Hi Sam,

> > There is now a general move away from "pack everything into one file"
> > to "create separate file for different purposes".
> 
> Users, nevertheless, do ask for a "single executable" option.
> 
> CLISP, being a developer's tool - as opposed to a user's tool, needs, in
> addition to "vendor model" you describe: a team of seasoned
> professionals building distributions to be used by many people, a
> "custom exec" model, when a lisp hacker throws together a quick solution
> and gives is to his 1 or 2 ad hoc users.
> 
> E.g., I want to run something on a box in which I cannot install anything.
> An executable image - as opposed to two files (runtime + image) - is
> easier to distribute.

This is not a sound argument. When a file is transferred to a machine,
whether by ftp, scp, the browser, or whatever, it is by default not executable.
This is means, it needs some "post-install" command to really make it
usable. Whether this command is a "chmod a+x" or "tar xfz" or "unzip -x",
does not make a big difference in practice.

Additionally, most users want to transfer binaries in a compressed way,
to save bandwidth.

Now, when you accept "tar xfz" or "unzip -x" as a post-install command,
there is no reason to insist on just 1 file.

So, when users ask for a "single executable" option, tell them that this
option would buy them nothing.

> > No. (savemem ... :executable t) is based on
> > spvw_memfile.d:savemem_with_runtime, which consists in *appending*
> > a memory image to an *executable file*.
> 
> I know, I wrote it.

The only way of generating an executable that does not cause portability
problems - and thus endless maintenance hassles - is through the compiler
($CC), that invokes the linker, or through the linker directly ($LD).

> > I certainly won't spend time digging in the internals of the Mach-O
> > object format in order to find out how to port this to Mac.
> 
> this is a regression on _all_ platforms.

No, it's not a regression if we tell people that a certain feature cannot
work on specific platforms, such as Mac OS X and MirBSD.

If you want the complete list of platforms where it works vs. does not work,
I can determine this list for you over time by running "make check-exec-image"
as part of my testing in the next few weeks.

But what I need is that "make check" does not abort prematurely, because
a "make check" failure means - to everyone - "the package is broken, you
should better not proceed with 'make install'".

Bruno