Duncan Coutts:
On Tue, 2008-08-12 at 11:11 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
I propose we do this:
- Extract the code from Cabal that generates Makefiles, and treat
it as
part of the GHC build system. Rather than generating a Makefile
complete with build rules, we generate a Makefile that just
has the package-specific metadata (list of modules, etc.), and put
the code to actually build the package in the GHC build system.
As you know, I've been trying to get rid of that code ever since it
arrived :-)
It will probably mean that we have a tighter dependency on Cabal,
because
we use it as a library rather than a black box; but hopefully we
can keep
our branch of Cabal more stable and not have to update it so often.
If you don't need to update so often it would make life easier for
Cabal
hackers and Manuel would be pleased :-)
Yes!
Anyway, this is an idea that I think is interesting. Obviously it
needs a
lot more fleshing out to be a real proposal, but I'm interested in
whether
anyone thinks this idea is worth persuing, or whether there are
better
alternatives.
I think this is definitely an interesting idea. At the moment, it
seems to me that all the metadata handling of Cabal is what's most
useful to GHC, whereas the actual build procedure and its
inflexibility causes a lot of grief, especially if you want to do
something non-standard. The proposed idea would pick the best of both
worlds (Cabal's metadata handling and make's build flexibility plus
the fact that many more people know how to tweak makefiles even if it
is a pain, but its pretty well understood pain).
Manuel
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