New Alpha_(re)

Wed, 2 Apr 1997 21:38:19 +0100 (WET DST)

On Wed, 2 Apr 1997, The African Chief wrote:

> I think this could be the way forward. Having a multitude 
> of command line switches is very good, in that it gives
> the programmer more flexibility to use the compiler in
> the way that he/she likes, not in the way that somebody
> else thinks they should. However, the price of flexibility
> is complexity. In case you haven't done this, can you
> introduce a .CFG file (like with Borland) where one can
> put all the command line switches that they want to use?

You can do all of this in a Makefile.

> The compiler will read the .CFG file before doing anything
> else, and will adjust its behaviour accordingly. I personally
> prefer this approach to using environment variables or the
> such. You can make many sample .CFG files 
> (e.g., borland.cfg, extended.cfg, iso.cfg, etc) which people
> can then rename to GPC.CFG or whatever.
> 
> Sorry if all this already exists. 

Environment variables are used to override default paths to libraries etc.
Commandline switches are used to select compiler behaviour (optimization,
debugging, dialect etc.)

For unix, setting environment variables is usually not necessary because
you build your own compiler with "taylormade" defaults hardcoded in the
compiler binary.

For MS-DOS, the compiler is often downloaded as a binary and installed in
a path other than the one specified at compile time. DJGPP has an elegant
solution for them: `djgpp.env'. That way, you don't have to clutter your
MS-DOS environment with a lot of environment variables.

Remaining are cygwin32 and OS/2 platforms.
cygwin32 is still experimental, maybe they implement something like
`djgpp.env'.

GPC has a config file: `specs'. You can change some of GPC's behaviour
here. Future versions of GPC may come with different driver binaries
(`gpc', `bpc', `epc' etc.) which preset a number of switches to select a
certain Pascal dialect.

Greetings,
JanJaap

---
Thus spake the master programmer:
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."
[The Tao Of Programming]

Jan-Jaap van der Heijden (janjaap@wit381304.student.utwente.nl)