Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtunx!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!munnari!vuwcomp!andrew
From: andrew@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andrew Vignaux)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Lightspeed C projects
Message-ID: <13742@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 8 Jun 88 03:42:07 GMT
References: <1407@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <4710@husc6.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: andrew@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andrew Vignaux)
Organization: Comp Sci, Victoria Univ, Wellington, New Zealand
Lines: 31

Something that I would like to see in LSC is the ability to define
preprocessor symbols for the *project* as a whole (ala Unix "cc -D").

I think there is a need for a conditional compilation facility even when
writing Macintosh-only code.  Consider a "change cursor" module to be used in
two programs, one event-driven and the other a more batch-like processor.
There is no need have the "maintain cursor" code when there will be no event
loop to call it.

One solution is for LSC to define the symbol `LSC' and the "project symbol" (a
canonicalized version of the project file name ?).  Then the programmer can
define whatever s/he likes in a header file.

A better solution might be to "include" the data fork of the project file
before compiling each file so s/he can do anything they want -- this fork is
currently unused.

"Putting the definitions in an include file" doesn't work because I want
different definitions depending on the particular project.  LSC's #include
search path partially solves the problem, except it means that you can only
have one project per directory, and the "library" file must be in a distinct
directory.

Of course if LSC (2.15) already has things predefined and they are in TFM, or
there's a nicer/better way, i'll shutup and go back to doing my Masters :-)

Comments?

Andrew
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