This may get a little off-topic, but still I had to get this of my chest:
On 1 Aug 2000, Paul D. Smith wrote:
> %% "Noel L Yap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> nly> Has anyone out there attempted to hack gmake to create and
> nly> process CRs as clearmake does?
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if you mean creating
> ClearCase config records, there's no possibility of this.
>
> First, Rational doesn't publish any API or other interface that would
> allow GNU make to communicate with MVFS and construct the data required,
> much less communicate it to the VOB and view servers. For years I asked
> them for something like that; I've given up.
It's really a pity that the free software community is so infatuated with
CVS. It's a genuine case of "they don't know what they're missing",
probably combined with a dose of general mistrust of SCM. I really think
the time has come for some kind of open source MVFS... I'm very unhappy
with rational's stewardship of ClearCase, especially the UNIXy side of it,
and their general attitude towards tools like perl, python and samba.
OTOH, the perl community isn't making it particularly easy to embed perl
into applications - witness the fact that hard coded paths are built into
the executable, making a compile of perl on the target site mandatory
(unless you are willing to jump through hoops when installing your perl
scripts and XS modules). Due to the big differences between various perl
versions, simply relying on the customer's perl installation is a customer
support disaster...
> Second, it's not at all clear whether it would be legal, under the GPL,
> to distribute GNU make sources modified in that way.
I don't understand where the problem is here. As long as the code lineage
is distinct, I don't see how the GPL would force you to reveal more than
the GNU make side of the implementation. All you're doing is integrating
API calls into GNU make. If this weren't so, then the mere act of porting
GNU make to some proprietary UNIX platform would be illegal too.
Anyway, I wouldn't consider GNU make to be a particularly good candidate
for this anyway, but this will get us way off topic...
Ramblings by - cg -
