Re: [ProgSoc] Asking for help from the sed heads

[Telford Tendys <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

> A short walk into Glebe or Newtown presents an entire universe of
> gastronimic wonders. Perhaps we can set up another list: food@nospam.progsoc..

Haven't walked in that direction much except when I'm desperate for
a parking spot (I really must get off my backside and get a resident
parking sticker).

> btw - this sounds like a useful program - where/when/will it be available?

OK, just so you know what you are getting, it's an attempt
to do what the gnu autoconf does but using `guile' instead of `M4'
and `make' instead of shell script. I also want to do things a bit
better than autoconf in as much as [1] make it simple to figure
out exactly what the test process it and [2] make it easy to
patch up the configuration system when things are going wrong
and [3] give the user a chance to override the configuration
as much or as little as they like.

Basically, when autoconf's ./configure scripts work, they
work well. When they don't work much hair is pulled on the
part of the user.

My little thing works like this:

A scheme program runs with `guile' as the interpreter
to process an initial config-test definition file
(also written in scheme) and produces one or more
Makefiles plus a host of test source files.

The Makefile is run with "make clean; make -k"
Since it's got the -k option, errors are ignored and
it builds as many targets as it can. When finished it
collects them all up into a shell script of the style:

CONFIG_VAR=param

This script can be included into other Makefiles
or used to initialise shell variables. The user also
gets to create a config file of overwriting variables
or variables that can't be determined automatically
(such as where to install to).

Thus, the whole build can come from a single make
command followed by a make install to do installation.

So far I'm just using it for a few things of my own
but if you want to have a go, I'll put the archive
somewhere findable.

	- Tel
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