Re: Extension Repository

One of the necessary predecessor features to getting something like 
this working is adding a measure of 'relocatability' to 3rd party 
extensions. Right now whenever the source for an extension is 
downloaded a couple things have to happen to build it:

1) It must be moved into the mx tree in the local moto source 
installation.
2) A makefile from another extension directory in the local moto source 
tree must be copied into the new extension directory.

Three things must be done so the above two steps can be avoided.

1) The moto extension compiler script needs to do its own installation 
and not rely on a Makefile in the extension directory to do it. The 
whole reason the Makefile is there is so that it can be configured with 
the appropriate install directory and do the installation. But mxc 
could be configured with that directory and do the installation just as 
easily. This change would be made in the mxc.sh script.

2) We should add a new file in each extension folder that specifies the 
name of the extension to be built (e.g. "codex.util" or "bio") . This 
way the location of the src folder won't matter, the extension name 
will determine the installation mx sub-directory. This file would be 
read in at build time and mxc.sh and mxgc.c would both need to be 
modified to accept this information.

3) The main configure script will need to be modified to call mxc 
directly as opposed to calling makefiles in each of the mx 
sub-directories.

Cory, Shay, you two have all the experience necessary to make these 
changes if you wanted. Otherwise if anyone else is up to the task just 
let me know!

-Dave

On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 09:41  PM, Cory Wright wrote:

> A few weeks/months ago I spent a few minutes coming up with some ideas 
> for
> a extension/module repository for Moto, similar to Perl's CPAN.  I 
> mailed
> the file to Dave back then, but have not done much with it since.  I 
> would
> like to know about any ideas you may have on this.  The current file is
> available at http://www.projectmoto.org/~corz/mess-ideas.txt .  No 
> name has
> really been given to a library written in pure Moto, so in this 
> document I
> simply refer to reusable Moto code as 'modules.'
>
> Cory
>
> --
> Cory Wright
> Stand Blue Technology
> http://www.standblue.net/
>