Greets,
I'm working on a huge CPAN distro, 50 modules and counting, of which
around 10 or so use XS code at present. The XS code is integrated
into the distro in an unconventional way -- it's at the end of
the .pm file after an __XS__ token. A routine built into Makefile.PL
walks the file hierarchy and extracts all the code, writing a single
KinoSearch.xs file on the fly just before WriteMakefile gets called.
There are a couple other tricks I'll skip for brevity's sake that are
necessary to make this scheme fly, but on the whole, it seems to be
working out pretty well.
I have a new problem now: in addition to the XS code, there's a bunch
of straight up C code which I've been stuffing in at the top of
the .xs file. That C codebase is growing large enough that it needs
to be broken out into separate files. However, I don't understand
the MakeMaker docs on how to add in .c and .h files.
The bulk of my C programming has been via Inline::C and XS, so I've
never had to beat my head against make. It seems to me that trying
to pick apart a wrapper as complex as MakeMaker is the wrong way to
go about learning a tool like make. I'd be content to put off those
lessons a little longer if another solution presented itself, but the
docs for the obvious candidate, Module::Build indicate that XS
support is in alpha, and sure enough, "./Build test" can't even find
the compiled libraries on my system. :\
I'll need to learn make eventually, and I'm happy to study, I'd just
like to 1) solve my current problem sooner rather than later, and 2)
go about learning systematically. Any advice?
Marvin Humphrey
Rectangular Research
http://www.rectangular.com/
