On Wed, 2 Apr 1997 00:08:59 +0200 (MET DST) Peter Gerwinski peter@agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de wrote:
[...]
In case you have some arguments to set it back to the previous state, just post it here. (These are only some constants in `rts/rts.h', so it was not much work to change. Perhaps (yet another) command-line switch would satisfy everybody?)
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? 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.
Oh, No! Please don't. Why don't we handle this like it is used in the common place way at unixish Systems: Take a Makefile and put a line PFLAGS (is this right?) in it. There you have all your flags, you think you need. Let's say there is a PBORLANDFLAGS=--borland-pascal --what-in-hell-else-is-needed-for-borland and a PMYFLAGS=--left-justified --enable-foo-warnings. Then you can put them together to the archive your program comes with and nobody needs to edit the GPC.CFG.
What one might do is put sample Makerules-file(s) to the GPC distribution.
Bye, Nils