cvs commit: hugs98/src MkInstal.in

[Ross Paterson]

On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 02:29:04PM +0100, Alastair Reid wrote:
> My gut feeling is that the libraries will acquire more ifdefs as time
> goes on so trying to eliminate the ones we have is only a short-term
> solution.
> 
> This suggests that we should distribute the raw libraries with Hugs
> and have the user run convert_libraries (probably invoked through the
> Makefile which is probably a better way to run things anyway).  
> 
> The problem is that this won't work on Windows.  If they have a C
> compiler, then they have cpp but they don't necessarily have a usable
> shell.  

Perhaps we could get by (for this release) with two source releases:
- a .zip for Windows with converted libraries
- a .tar.gz for Unix with unconverted libraries and a Makefile that
  runs convert_libraries
We'd just need to tell the Windows users they can't change
USE_DOUBLE_PRECISION if they want to use FFI.

As for the long term, I'd always thought of convert_libraries as a kludge
to get through the transition.  I hope things will get cleaner after this
release is out the door.