[Ecls-list] Current HEAD hangs during compilation

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Juan Jose
Garcia-Ripoll<juanjose.garciaripoll at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Gabriel Dos
> Reis<gdr at integrable-solutions.net> wrote:
>> In that case 'make clean' should just wipe out the 'build' directory.
>> Or just remove the directory :-)
>> (The more we ask the user, the more we insert uncomfortable barriers.)
>
> Well, then we will get reports from people complaining that we removed
> their build directory without asking :-)

Well, they were not asked about its creation in the first place.

> More seriously, I think this
> might be a problem if somebody builds ECL out of place and we decide
> just to clean up the whole directory without asking.

huh?

>
> Perhaps one might decide a list of things to delete that might
> interfere, and deleting something like *.fas, ecl/, c/, lsp/, clos/
> etc before configuring again.

Anything that makes 'make clean' really clean should be
done.  By the accounts you gave earlier, it looks that
doing a fine grained 'clean' sounds a lot complicated.
 But, if you have a much fine grained solution that works all
the time, I'm not going to complain :-)
But please, don't ask questions.  Make clean should not ask
questions.  Make install should not.

>
> But really: would the following question be so awful?
>
> "You intend to configure ECL but files from a previous build have been found.
> In order to proceed, we need to delete these files and directories:
> ....
> Can we proceed (Y/n)?"

Yes, it is awful :-)  More precisely, it tries to dump
complexities on the user about ECL build internals.  The ones that
are likely to understand the consequences and meaningfully
answer would probably know something else.  The rest of us
would either be 'frightened' or answer 'Y' or 'n' out of fear/ignorance.

Remember that

   configure
   make
   make install
   make clean

should not be complicated or rely on the user knowing a lot about ECL.
And that is the most of us ECL users.


>
> After all, most users will not get to see this question: hopefully
> they will get ECL from their distro, once we become mainstream :-) or
> are experienced enough to dare use configure.

But those of us who would get to see those questions are
saying: please don't make it more complicated than it should be.

-- Gaby