Re: [gobo-eiffel-develop] First XACE draft

[Andreas L. <no...@sb...>]

On 28 May 2001 20:06:42 +0400, Alexander Kogtenkov wrote:
> Andreas Leitner wrote:

> We were planning to introduce the similar XML scheme in VE when "cluster.es"
> was developed. Unfortunately at that time there were no descent XML parser
> and Windows INI files did the job. At  the moment "cluster.es" in its INI format
> is still used, but we would like to switch to XML format sometime.
> 
> It seems that current "cluster.es" works pretty nice for VE, so the future XML
> need to be functionally as rich as "cluster.es" is. It also would be great if
> some common format like the proposed XACE will be used.
> 
> The comparison with "cluster.es" shows that XACE misses the following
> in its current incarnation:
> 1. The possibility to specify the source files
>    a) in several paths
see updated specs
>    b) with different file masks (AFAIK this is only supported by VE - all other
> compilers read only *.e files)
hmmm, dificult. because all other compilers look only for ".e" files.
The most I could do is add an extension, that will only be accepted if
the "--ve" flag is given. not sure if this is a good idea though. 

>    c) depending on some additional settings (like the current OS)
>    d) recursively
> 2. The possibility to specify cluster dependencies taking some settings into
> account (e.g., OS platform again)

Well, that can be handled using condition variables. a native ve
implementation of XACE for example could always define "PLATFORM" to the
current target platform. Or am I missing something. 

> 3. The possibility to specify external dependencies (again taking some settings
> into account).

It's on the todo list and a must have, since I want eXML to work with it
(;

> 1c, 2 and 3 all require some general mechanism to make XACE conditional.
> Using compiler-name variable is OK, but it does not cover all the needs (at least
> not for VE). Some extension mechanism is also required to allow compiler-specific
> options to be specified.

i will look into compiler options later. can you give me examples where
condition variables are not sufficient?

btw, I was thinking about a mechanism to select only subclusters in a
library. alla "GOBO.KERNEL". We could then also allow
"GOBO.KERNEL.SPEC.${EIFFEL_COMPILER}", I think that fits the VE system
more closely, right?

> As to the system settings, usually there are at least two versions of the system -
> debug and finalized. And it would be rather attractive to switch between different
> sets of the settings just by specifying a different command-line parameter or
> by selecting a system type in the GUI environment without the need to modify XACE
> every time. The same applies to libraries (precompiled clusters).

That's where condition variables are totaly sufficient. Just make two
"option" blocks with condtions:

<options condtion="RELEASE_BUILD">
...
</options>
<options condition="DEBUG_BUILD">
...
</options>


> As to two top-level elements ("system" and "library"), there is a possibility that the
> system/library and cluster reside in the same folder, so the description file can list
> properties of both of them. In fact nothing prevents one XACE file to specify several
> related clusters.

Don't understand. Of course you can specify more clusters in once XACE
file.


regards,
Andreas