Re: CONS?

Harlan asks:

> Anybody looking at CONS as a possible framework to replace Make?

No.  Another tool that I've heard some (Java) people raving
about is Ant.  Any hands-on review of either would be very
welcome.  Of course, because ARK is a "both/and" kind of
thing (rather than "either/or"), we could very plausibly
have package stuff that used all three :-)

> For example, I track the CVS versions of NTP and PIKT (and
> ark), and if we had the ability to "use" this in ARK
> instead of requiring a tarball, ...

ARK doesn't "require" a tarball; it's just that the bits of
code that happen to be lying around today happen to require
them.  The fundamental thing in ARK land is "same as that
guy over there, except this little bit different".

Below is an (untested) <assemble-source> method that's nothing
to do with tarballs.

Will

<assemble-source>
  <constraint><dependency type="essential" name="." on-method="get-source" /></constraint>
  <param name="CVS">@host:CVS@</param>
  <param name="PKG_NAME">!pkg_name</param>
  <param name="PKG_VERSION">!pkg_version</param>

  <code proxyable="." redoable="no"><![CDATA[
cd "$PKG_BUILD_DIR/$PKG_NAME-$PKG_VERSION"
$CVS -q update -d -P
]]></code></assemble-source>