On 30/08/2014, at 11:24 AM, Martin DeMello wrote:

> But compiled felix libraries are indistinguishable from c++ libraries, right?

Yes, with extern "C" entry points.


> In which case, why does felix need a systemwide language package manager?

For the Felix library code. For example suppose I want to install
a binding for GMP, or SDL. Where do I put it?

Underneath these are binary libraries and C header files,
but the binding code itself is Felix.

And at the moment quite a lot of code is pure Felix.

> Let $HOME/.felix be the *only* supported place to install libraries into.

Srean can't do that. His "home" account on university computer is
tiny. (though he could use a link).

> What I'm saying is ruthlessly strip away unneeded features and concentrate on 
> providing a really good experience for a single developer doing everything as 
> user, in a single $HOME directory or mac/windows equivalent. This is, after 
> all, felix's primary audience.

Yes, but not one with any money :-)

So I need to consider enterprise wide deployment strategy too.

> 
> Anecdotally, I had some free time over the last couple of days and I thought 
> I'd contribute by adding a much-needed examples/ directory to the felix repo, 
> but in two evenings of trying, I've still not been able to get past
> 
> $ flx
> Cache may be out of date due to grammar upgrade!
> Grammar time stamp          =1409204024.000
> Automaton.syntax time stamp =BIG BANG
> Delete cache /home/mdemello/.felix/cache/text
> Delete cache /home/mdemello/.felix/cache/binary
>  
> and flx --test=build/release does get past that, but rebuilds the stdlib 
> every time.


This will happen if you ran 

        sudo make install

on the old build system. root ends up owning the cache.

> From the diagnostics, it successfully writes out
> 
> /home/mdemello/.felix/cache/binary/home/mdemello/code/felix/build/release/share/lib/grammar/grammar.files/syntax.automaton
> 
> every run, but then cannot read it back the next run:
> 
> Can't load automaton 
> '/home/mdemello/.felix/cache/binary/home/mdemello/code/felix/build/release/share/lib/grammar/grammar.files/syntax.automaton'from
>  disk: building!
> 
> This is simply not a good user experience, nor an encouragement to contribute 
> if every time I try to write some code I end up wrestling with the ecosystem 
> instead.

Of course not, but it shouldn't happen. so I guess your user account doesn't 
have
permission to write the file: can you check if it is actually there?

>  I think felix is trying to do too many things with too limited a supply of 
> manpower.


Indeed. More man power is needed :-)

> I'd suggest at least looking seriously at picking on an existing 
> cross-platform package management system, and modifying felix's 
> library/include search mechanism to interoperate with it.

I'm not aware of any :-)

but the issue at the moment is simpler: to actually ALLOW the user to configure 
their
search paths. At the moment they can't always do that. That's what I'm trying to
enable at the moment.


--
john skaller
skal...@users.sourceforge.net
http://felix-lang.org




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