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Nicky

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Nicky Gerritsen <[email protected]>
> Date: 24 maart 2016 06:56:52 CET
> To: Max Howell <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [swift-evolution] Draft Proposal SwiftPM System Module Search 
> Paths
> 
> First of all, +1 on the idea.
> 
> But second a question: in the Package.swift file providers section, what 
> would need to be done in for example the "apt" case it a package has a 
> different name on Debian and Ubuntu?
> This is something that happens occasionally, so we should at least be able to 
> support this.
> 
> Is this something that can be tackled by using (optional) extra parameters on 
> the enum values?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Nicky
> 
>> On 23 mrt. 2016, at 19:10, Max Howell via swift-evolution 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> SwiftPM System Module Search Paths
>> Proposal: SE-NNNN
>> Author: Max Howell
>> Status: Awaiting review
>> Review manager: Anders Bertelrud
>> Introduction
>> Swift is able to import C libraries in the same manner as Swift libraries.
>> 
>> For this to occur the library must be represented by a clang module-map file.
>> 
>> The current system for using these module-map files with SwiftPM works, but 
>> with a number of caveats that must be addressed.
>> 
>> Motivation
>> The current implementation of system module packages have a number of 
>> problems:
>> 
>> Install locations vary across platforms and modulemap files require absolute 
>> paths
>> /usr/lib:/usr/local/lib is not always a sufficient -L search path
>> /usr/include:/usr/local/include is not always a sufficient -I C compiler 
>> search path
>> Installing the system library is left up to the end-user to figure out
>> For example to import a module map representing the GTK library, the include 
>> search path must be supplemented with -I/usr/include/gtk so that a number of 
>> includes in the gtk.h header can be sourced for the complete modular 
>> definition of GTK.
>> 
>> For example to import a module map representing the GTK library a user must 
>> first have a copy of GTK and its headers installed. On Debian based systems 
>> the install name for this system package is libgtk-3-0-dev which is not 
>> entirely intuitive.
>> 
>> For example, Homebrew and MacPorts on OS X install to prefixes other than 
>> /usr..modulemap files must specify headers with absolute paths. The standard 
>> we encourage with modulemaps is for the headers to be specified with an 
>> assumed prefix of /usr, but you will not find eg. jpeglib.h at 
>> /usr/include/jpeglib.h if it is installed with Homebrew or MacPorts.
>> 
>> Proposed Solution
>> We propose that SwiftPM gains the ability to use the cross-platform 
>> pkg-config tool so that it can query pkg-config for the missing path and 
>> flag arguments.
>> 
>> We propose that SwiftPM gains the ability to use the cross-platform 
>> pkg-config tool to identify when the system package is not installed to a 
>> /usr and in such a case preprocess the modulemap changing the prefix it uses.
>> 
>> We propose that Package.swift is supplemented with metadata that provides 
>> the package-install-name for specific platforms.
>> 
>> Detailed Design
>> Solving Path/Flags Issues
>> Some of our problems can be solved by using the cross platform tool: 
>> pkg-config.
>> 
>> A C package can provide a pkg-config file (.pc) which describes:
>> 
>> Its install location
>> Supplementary C-flags that should be used when building against this library
>> If SwiftPM used the .pc file that comes with packages, this solves problems 
>> 1 through 3.
>> 
>> Of the tickets we currently have open describing issues using 
>> Swift-system-module-packages, reading the .pc file would fix all of them.
>> 
>> It is a convention to name the .pc file after the library link-name, so we 
>> can determine which .pc file to ask pkg-config for by parsing the .modulemap 
>> file in the Swift package.
>> 
>> Providing Package Install Names
>> Package.swift would be supplemented like so:
>> 
>> let package = Package(
>>     name: "CFoo",
>>     providers: .Brew(installName: "foo"),
>>                 .Apt(installName: "libfoo-dev"),
>> )
>> Thus, in the event of build failure for modules that depend on this package 
>> we provide additional help to the user:
>> 
>> error: failed to build module `bar'
>> note: you may need to install `foo' using your system-packager:
>> 
>>     apt-get install libfoo-dev
>> Since the syntax to provide this information uses an explicit enum we can 
>> add code for each enum to detect which system packagers should be 
>> recommended. The community will need to write the code for their own 
>> platforms. It also means that if a specific packager requires additional 
>> parameters, they can be added on a per enum basis.
>> 
>> Impact on Existing Code
>> There will be no impact on existing code as this feature simply improves an 
>> existing feature making new code possible.
>> 
>> Alternatives Considered
>> A clear alternative is allowing additional flags to be specified in a 
>> system-module package’s Package.swift.
>> 
>> However since these paths and flags will vary by platform this would because 
>> a large matrix that is quite a maintenance burden. Really this information 
>> is recorded already, in the system package itself, and in fact almost all 
>> packages nowadays provide it in a .pc pkg-config file.
>> 
>> Also we do not want to allow arbitrary flags to be specified in 
>> Package.swift, this allows packages too much power to break a large 
>> dependency graph with bad compiles. The only entity that understands the 
>> whole graph and can manage the build without breakage is SwiftPM, and 
>> allowing packages themselves to add arbitrary flags prevents SwiftPM from 
>> being able to understand and control the build ensuring reliability and 
>> preventing “Dependency Hell”.
>> 
>> Future Directions
>> The build system could be made more reliable by having the specific packager 
>> provide the information that this proposal garners from pkg-config. For 
>> example, Homebrew installs everything into independent directories, using 
>> these directories instead of more general POSIX search paths means there is 
>> no danger of edge-case search path collisions and the wrong libraries being 
>> picked up.
>> 
>> If this was done pkg-config could become just one option for providing this 
>> data, and be used only as a fallback.
>> 
>> We could add an additional flag so that deployment of Swift Packages could 
>> be made simpler and system dependencies be installed automatically.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> swift-evolution mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
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