Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] [PATCH] check target

[Tony Theodore]

On 2 October 2010 21:59, Volker Grabsch <address@hidden> wrote:
> Martin Gerhardy <address@hidden> schrieb:
>> i'm just trying to get mingw-cross-env compiling some libs on a windows
>> system, too.

Very interesting, you'll have to report on how it goes.

>> for this i found it useful to check for all the needed tools.
>
> This looks great. I also wanted to do this, but I didn't find
> the time (yet). Some quick notes about what should be added
> before including it:
>
> 1) Check how portable it is
>
>     a) maybe we should use `...` instead of $$()

Backticks are fairly portable, $$() only works in Bourne shells, not C shells.

>     b) I'm not sure whether "which" available on BSD systems
>
>        Maybe executing "TOOL --help" or something like that is a better
>        way? (This is how we check for (g)sed, (g)patch, etc)

"which" is available on FreeBSD at least. How would it catch the
missing g* variants or specific versions?

> 2) Point to the docs, as missing requirements are usually the result
>   of not having read them. :-)  It could be something like this:
>
>   echo 'Please check the "requirements" section of doc/index.html'
>
> 3) Provide a list of tools instead of a long "check" section. I could
>   write the corresponing "macro foo" if you like.
>
>      TOOLS = wget openssl ...

Or even embed something like id="provides-tool-wget" in the anchor tag
of docs that can be parsed. This probably assumes gsed is already
available though.

Cheers,

Tony