skaller wrote:
On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 12:03 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
Ok, you clearly have looked at a lot more build systems than I have. So you think there's a shift from autoconf-style "figure out the configuration by running tests" to having a database of configuration settings for various platforms? I'm surprised - I thought conventional wisdom was that you should write your build system to be as independent as possible from the name of the build platform, so that the system is less sensitive to changes in its environment, and easier to port. I can see how wiring-in the parameters can make the system more concrete, transparent and predictable, and perhaps that makes it easier to manage. It's hard to predict whether this would improve our situation without actually doing it, though - it all comes down to the details.
This misses the point. The 'suck it and see' idea fails totally for cross-compilation. It's a special case.
The right way to do things is to separate the steps:
(a) make a configuration (b) select a configuration
logically.
Hmm, I don't see how the approach "fails totally" for cross-compilation. You simply have to create the configuration on the target machine, which is exactly what we do when we cross-compile GHC. Admittedly the process is a bit ad-hoc, but it works. Cheers, Simon