Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Grant Jacobs wrote:
As I said, I don't think "make" is a good thing to think of for a *normal* Pascal programmer. We're, of course, deep in the internals, but a normal programm doesn't want to (and shouldn't have to) think about when a compiler recreates which files. It should just produce a correct executable.
You could try keep it all within gpc as so not to generate another name that could conflict. Make gpc itself a small program that manages whatever programs do the actual work.
That's what the program in question ("GP") actually is. (So, as I suggested, we could rename the existing gpc executable and call this one gpc. But I'm not sure yet, because it is an incompatible change ...)
But that is what gcc is doing already, except it is orchestrating between various languages to arrive at a common executable format. Meanwhile it is involving such diverse programs as 'as', 'ld', etc.
IMO the thing that is missing in GPC is clear instructions as to how to run individual compiles etc. for systems that include units and/or modules and/or libraries. Saying "use -automake" does not cut it. Of course, that seems to be exactly the problem you are trying to solve, but hiding the machiniations behind yet another supervisory program does not fill the bill to my mind. Therefore I propose the name YASP. :-)
I would rather see a program that scans the various sources, starting from the named one, and creates a make file for use by gnu make. This is more a Unix philosophy than a C one. After that a simple script or bat file should be able to replace YASP. Pascal is a simple language, using it should also be simple.