[Info-vax] Modern software development for VMS, was: Re: source control and semantics (Re: Why so much Unix envy?)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2014-09-16, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
> Shark8 wrote:
>> On 9/14/2014 9:40 AM, David Froble wrote:
>>> What's wrong with directories containing source files, build files, and
>>> such?
>> 
>> The reason that directories/source-files is bad is because it makes 
>> things like compiling/linking dependent on path-searching; it also makes 
>> things a bit more difficult for dependency-management and encourages 
>> inefficient practices/procedures (i.e. recursive make).
>
> How so?  I have no problems.  I can show examples.
>

$ set response/mode=good_natured

You write Unix style makefiles ? :-)

One of the things I use recursive make for is to build the same code for
a variety of targets so any replacement would have to support that usage.
(I do just that in the makefile structure for my own baremetal library).

As for the directories, I pull references out to the top of the makefile
and use things like VPATH when possible.

>
>> IOW, to store programs as text is to ignore that there are constraints 
>> as to the validity thereof.
>
> As far as I know, programs ARE text.  I know of nothing else.

Shark8's argument is that source code should be stored as parsed
tokenised data with a structure. That makes it easier to find
differences while ignoring irrelevant details such as comments,
whitespace (unless it's Python :-)) and brace style.

There are some benefits to his argument (especially when it comes to
doing things like structured diffs) but since I've never worked with
such a system, I'm not qualified to judge the overall benefits and
problems.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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