[Mono-devel-list] GAC and third party libraries: post Beta planning.

[Michal Moskal]

On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 07:31:18AM +0200, Gert Driesen wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 06:42, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > > Has anyone ever thought about maintaining not only API compatibility,
> > > but also maintaining a compatibile commandline interface ?  Doesn't
> > > anyone see the importance of that ?
> > 
> > Absolutely, we are backwards compatible, as much as possible.  If you do
> > not want to use -pkg: do not use -pkg, nobody is forcing you to.
> > 
> > If you dislike this approach, suggest and articulate a different way of
> > properly dealing with this.  
> >
> > You had a whole week to articulate it, when I posted the proposal to the
> > list ;-)
> 
> You're right, I was very busy ... I've got a dayjob and a gf (this
> explains it all, right ;)), and was busy getting NAnt working on Mono
> Beta 1 (which was just finished, hurray :(, on to beta 2 ? pfff)
> 
> But let me start by saying that I'm definitely not a *nix expert, and
> I'm not claiming to know the answer to everything, but unix already
> allows the output of other tools to be included in parameters to mcs, so
> why not just use pkg-config inline to resolve the path to third party
> libraries (this probably was answered numerous times already, but I
> haven't had time to read all messages this week) ?  Because that would
> mean that you still need to know the assembly names (but not their
> location) ?  Is that an issue ?

I guess this is just a quick hack to be used when you compile from command
line. Just to save users typing. I guess there will be no portability
issues when using NAnt (you can simply translate the <pkg-config>
stuff). And for projects using plain Makefiles, my guess is that:
  a) they are not going to be portable to windows for numerous other
     reasons
  b) fixing the makefile to say `pkg-config` instead of -pkg isn't that
     hard (during porting application for windows) in case you are
     dealing with some other unixism from a) as well. And hey! you are
     going to have /bin/sh, pkg-config and such installed anyway...

[...]
> However, allowing users to take advantages of operating system and
> framework specific features is one thing, forcing users to have a
> framework-specific build file is not our intention ... 

Nobody forces anyone to use -pkg. Users willing to retain Windows
compatibility are free to do so. OTOH I personally wouldn't call running
$(CSC) `pkg-config ...` from makefile windows-portability, as it is
going to force windows users to install lots of unix stuff anyway.

And BTW -- as far as I understand the system assemblies are going to be
installed in separate framework directory anyway.

-- 
: Michal Moskal :: http://www.kernel.pl/~malekith :: GCS !tv h e>+++ b++
: When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson :: UL++++$ C++ E--- a?