[Mono-devel-list] ilasm name change

[Paolo Molaro]

On 03/08/03 Jackson Harper wrote:
> 	Some people have been suggesting/requesting a name change for ilasm.
> There are a few other .net implementations that use ilasm, so some
> people have 2 or 3 different ilasm applications on their machine. 
> 
> 	There are a few diff options such as setting up a script with a diff
> name that calls prefix/mono prefix/ilasm.exe, creating a virtual link,
> or doing a full fledged name change. 
> 
> 	Here are my name suggestions:
> 
> 	milasm
> 	mono-ilasm
> 	gilasm
> 	gnilasm 	(*say it out loud ;-)

The mono ilasm tool can have a temporary name like milasm until it's
functional. The name can be retained even after for compatibility
and so that by using milasm or whatever the name ends up to be we are sure
we're using the mono ilasm. But in the end we will install an executable
with the name 'ilasm', because many tools (especially compilers)
hard-code the name and as such 'ilasm' is sort of an interface name,
like the name of a function.
Note that for this reason ilasm is a completely different case than,
say, resgen/monoresgen (programs for which I set the name): resgen is a 
developer tool that is basically only used from makefiles. We can expect
a developer to be able to issue make RESGEN=monoresgen if needed, or to
tweak the makefile. Or, if it's a nant file, I guess the change will be
done automatically by the new versions of nant. With ilasm the case is
different since it's used under the hood by programs ran by the end
user.
So, you can go ahead and change the name now, but keep in mind that we
will install the ilasm binary anyway: program-name conflicts need to be
handled by the installer of the package (tipically distributions: both
Debian and Redhat have the alternative system that can deal with such
issues).

lupus

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