Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sunic!dkuug!harald.ruc.dk!jba From: jba@harald.ruc.dk (Jan B. Andersen) Newsgroups: comp.os.aos Subject: Re: Should 'make' for AOS/VS look like Unix-make? Message-ID: <117@harald.UUCP> Date: 21 Sep 89 20:02:01 GMT References: <115@harald.UUCP> <513.nlhp3@oracle.nl> Organization: RUC - Roskilde University Center, Denmark Lines: 89 sbower@oracle.nl (Steve Bower) writes: [I (jba) asked about /switches vs. -options, "x1 x2 x2" vs. x1+x2+x3] >Just an aside: Are you aware of the "make" offering from DG? I think it's >bundled in with the TCS (Text Control System), very old, however I think >it's out there somewhere. Yes, we have SMU/TCS (Source Management Utilities) on the MV. >I'm under the impression that you have a substantial development investment >made on some Unix platform, and you would like to move it to the DG with a >minimum of fuss, thus the urge to port "make". No - it's the other way around. Several years ago, the computer science department at Roskilde University Center bought a MV/10000 and at the same time I was hired as a systems programmer/manager. Until now, it has mostly been used for teaching Simula. Most of my work has consisted in helping the students, installing software, issuing STR's and keeping track of the manuals (it's amazing how quickly they tend to disappear!) I have also developed my programming environment (APE) and a small mail system. In fact, one my favorit occupations is writing CLI-macros. But this year, we finally got the network installed, and the world of free, easily accessible Unix-software emerged. We only have 3 small Unix-machines at the department (1 NCR TOWER and 2 SUN's) without much diskspace. And now I want some of the Unix programming tools on the MV, things like grep, cut, paste, make, awk, Elm (I'm working on that!). Well, we actually have them all (except for Elm) because we have MV/UX, but I envy (sp?) all you in the Unix-world for the many utilities you have/can have. And in my position, I can afford to use some time in porting these to AOS/VS. But I would like to do it in a way, so others without MV/UX and SMU could have it, and maybe even port other programs, like mailx, nslookup or NNTP to AOS/VS. I can do without make and the other programs, but if it could be done without to much trouble I would very much like it, instead of writing hundreds of little macros to do slightly different tasks. >Environment variable support will be needed, switches for all the subcommands >that "make" normally calls (cc, ld) will have to be modified, etc. Simple >expansion of something like `ls *.c` which is so easy in a make script >is very tough in AOS/VS (sure, [!fi], but it can only handle the simple cases). >Even determining date dependencies will be tough! You'll also have to worry >about the (friendly) CLI sticking it's nose into whatever parameters you >want to feed to make. I'm sure you've already encountered headaches (well >at least pain-in-the-a**) when the cli compresses your whitespace, steals >your commas, and expands your brackets and parenthesis! >So, if you really want to pursue such a path, My recommendation is: >Don't modify the interface to support DG-isms at all. Don't allow switches >and don't rely on the CLI to do much for you. Simply write "make" as a "c" >program which grabs the command line and takes care of everything itself. >Use the standard Unix switch format and parse it yourself. I think the >extra parsing is worth it, because whatever you come up with (such as "+"'s >in your example) will (sooner or later, it always does) come back and bite >you later. I wasn't planning of implementing both make and sh(1). The makefile would in all, except for the most trivial, cases have to be modified. >Perhaps you can make use of the GNU group's GNU-make and start from there? I have found a suitable make.Z at uunet, a neat little thing which pre-dates GNU. >They may even have an AOS/VS version of gnumake ported already! If they have, I would be most interested! >I'd be interested in hearing what you've come up with so far? Well, I just ftp'ed the make-program yesterday, inserted a #ifdef to #include and compiled it. Unfortunately, it was #ifdef'ed for three different O/S (unix, eon ?? and os9) so it didn't do anything!! But some day next week, I hope to have a working version (with a Unix-like interface). >What kind of project is involved? The project is Elm 2.2 Patchlevel 10. Anyone got a PD-implementation of curses? This is were I'm stuck right now. Maybe I'll have to rewrite the screen-handling and restrict it to work on Dasher terminals. It's a start, and with the new VT-100 support in 7.65 that will cover 90% of the cases. >Just curious, Good luck, Steve. Thanks.