Version control systems

[Simon Marlow]

Matthias Kilian wrote:

> I mean the GHC-specific template used for building the Makefile
> (Distribution/Simple/GHC/Makefile.in) and the function `makefile`
> in Distribution/Simple/GHC.hs (this function even spills out some
> some make rules in addition to what's in Makefile.in, which looks
> very wrong to me).
> 
> Yes, it relies only on the Cabal metadata, but the output is a
> Makefile only useful for building GHC.

Ok, this statement is plainly not true, since I can use 'cabal makefile' 
to build any package outside of the GHC build tree.  So perhaps I've 
misunderstood your point?

> It'd be better to be able to run
> 
> $ ./Setup mkmetadata -prefix foo-
> 
> which just produces some simple variable declarations like
> 
> 	foo-impl-ghc-build-depends = rts
> 	foo-impl-ghc-exposed-modules = Data.Generics Data.Generics.Aliases ...
> 	...
> 	foo-exposed-modules = Control.Applicative Control.Arrow ...
> 	...
> 	foo-c-sources = cbits/PrelIOUtils.c cbits/WCsubst.c ...
> 	...
> 	foo-windows-extra-libaries = wsock32 msvcrt kernel32 user32 shell32
> 	foo-extensions = CPP
> 	foo-ghc-options =  -package-name base
> 	foo-nhc98-options = -H4M -K3M

Yes, we could use this to implement GHC's build system.  It's somewhat 
similar to the scheme I suggested in the other thread, but more generic. 
  I'd be completely happy to do it this way if the functionality would 
be useful to others outside GHC too.

Cheers,
	Simon