Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 23:34:15 GMT From: Mark Valentine <mark@thuvia.demon.co.uk> To: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net> Cc: arch@freebsd.org, audit@freebsd.org Subject: Re: make(1) enhancement - an 'environment processor' option Message-ID: <200201062334.g06NYFN84452@dotar-sojat.thuvia.org> In-Reply-To: Peter Pentchev's message of Jan 6, 11:30pm
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> From: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>
> Date: Sun 6 Jan, 2002
> Subject: Re: make(1) enhancement - an 'environment processor' option
> > It looks like it should be easy enough to provide this functionality in
> > the build system (e.g. bsd.port.mk).
>
> But would it really? I had this idea initially, before I wrote penv(1)
> as a standalone preprocessor, and believe me, I tried - but it quickly
> got ugly, when things came to trusting or checking the output of a program
> to determine which variables should be unset and which ones should be set,
> including setting variables to values containing whitespace :)
Why the complexity? Why the need to run an external program to read the
values of these variables?
I'm not familiar with penv(1), but from a perusal it seems that it manages
some set of simple variable assignments under /var/db, in some horrendous
file-per-variable format(?). Why aren't these just stored in a file in
make(1) compatible format?
Fix that, and just have bsd.port.mk include /var/db/penv/${PORTNAME} if it
exists.
> > Can you suggest any other uses for this feature besides supporting penv(1)?
>
> Not for the moment, no; but supporting penv(1) is nice,
Touching a fundamental, universal utility to specifically support an
application for which it's used 0.001% of the time isn't very nice...
> > make(1) already contains too many hacks for the FreeBSD build system.
>
> This particular change should be easy to add to GNU make, too; this is
> on my to-do list for the next couple of days.
I'd be quite interested to see how willing the GNU Make maintainers are
to adopt this.
Cheers,
Mark.
--
Mark Valentine, Thuvia Labs <mark@thuvia.co.uk> <http://www.thuvia.co.uk>;
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich." Mark Valentine uses
"We're kind of stupid that way." *munch* *munch* and endorses FreeBSD
-- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com>; <http://www.freebsd.org>;
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200201062334.g06NYFN84452>