RE: [Gcl-devel] Re: [Axiom-developer] New design for Axiom web site

[Weiss, Juergen]

I would also argue in favor of unbundling the lisp system
(gcl). It's not a problem to load compiled C code (for 
example socket extensions) into a lisp system (Camm already
posted the code). It bloats the Axiom distribution
unnecessarily. Eventually we had to add CMU distributions
and others. For commercial lisps on the other hand we
can't do it. The Debian and the FreeBSD package system
take care of dependencies. So it was certainly necessary
to add gcl in the beginning to get started on equal level.
With the necessary fixes/patches applied to gcl it will
not be necessary with the future.

With respect to the build system: Generating the lisp
part of Axiom is not very demanding with respect to
the build system. But as soon as the graphics and
dispatcher and other C code comes in, we will probably
need autoconfig and/or configure on the long run. We 
have to figure out, where X resides, if signal handling
is BSD or SYSV etc. But that's not very pressing at 
the moment.

What we should change immediately is, that the make
variables are not handed down from the toplevel make
step by step. The variables (ENV) should be in a
Makefile.inc, which will get included by every make
file. This will allow to call make in src/interp
or src/algebra selectively during development.

Regards

Juergen Weiss

Juergen Weiss     | Universitaet Mainz, Zentrum fuer Datenverarbeitung,
address@hidden| 55099 Mainz, Tel: +49(6131)39-26361, FAX:
+49(6131)39-26407


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Murray [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 9:14 AM
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden; 
> address@hidden; address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Gcl-devel] Re: [Axiom-developer] New design for 
> Axiom web site 
> 
> 
> root writes:
> > I don't understand why it is important to use an already installed
> > lisp image.  It seems likely to be yet-another-source-of-trouble
> > like the X library issues. What am I missing?
> 
> The already-installed lisp versions (may) have been hacked to
> actually work, and they may be standard didtributions of the lisp
> compiler distributed by the OS vendor (.rpm, .deb or FreeBSD "port"
> files).
> 
> The Axiom copy of lisp is a fork, and an incompatible one to boot,
> so us OS people (well, me anyway - I'm with FreeBSD) are trying to
> use the one that we already have to get things to work.
> 
> After all, when you get (say) X, it doesn't come bundled with the
> version of GCC that the XFree86 folks have certified that it will
> compile with, right? Instead, over time #ifdef hell has developed,
> and configuration stuff has been done to make sure that whatever
> package it is has been put together to work with whatever you already
> have, as far as practical. Sometimes, of course you have to bail out
> and say things like "This needs an ANSI C compiler, K&R won't work,
> ever!", but bolting every tool that is needed onto the side of the
> package concerned is overkill IMO.
> 
> I hear what you say about the extensions, and I understand why you
> need them; are Camm's proposals not suitable?
> 
> That's the way I'm thinking :-)
> 
> M
> --
> Mark Murray
> iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH
> 
> 
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