[Axiom-developer] Re: gcl and noweb in the build-improvements source tree

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, Bill Page wrote:

| Gaby, et al.
|
| Every time I download build-improvments on a new machine, I've been
| thinking about the decision to include gcl and noweb source in the
| Axiom source tree (in source format) in the SVN repository at
| SourceForge. It seems to me that rather than having gcl inside the
| tree
|
|   /trunk
|      ....
|      /branches/wh-sandbox
|     ...
|      /branches/build-improvements
|       /branches/build-improvements/gcl
|       /branches/build-improvements/noweb
|       ...
|
| what we should have done is create a new root directory
|
|   /trunk
|      ....
|      /branches/wh-sandbox
|     ...
|      /branches/build-improvements
|     ...
|
|   /extras
|     /gcl
|     /noweb
|     ...
|
| That way, it would be possible to avoid having to pull all the
| source for gcl and noweb if these are already pre-installed.

That is a good alternative.
I would rename /extras to /tools though :-)


The implication though is that when we make a release, we must make
sure gcl and noweb are included.  That slightly complicates the logic
of the Makefiles, but it is doable.  Also we must watch out that
people don't forget building and testing --without-gcl and
--without-noweb (which will be the common cases).

-- Gaby