Re: Introducing ExtUtils::Builder, a new compilation and linking toolkit

On 20.11.12 02:11, Leon Timmermans wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As a few of you may already know, I've been working on a new
> compilation and linking toolkit, called ExtUtils::Builder. It's
> intended as a replacement for ExtUtils::CBuilder. ExtUtils::CBuilder
> has a number of issues that I'm running into:
> 1) The only thing it does reliably is creating loadable-objects for
> perl. On some platforms it doesn't do shared libraries or executables,
> and static libraries aren't in the picture anywhere. It also insists
> on linking to perl's dependencies on some platforms. This greatly
> reduces the usefulness of the library.
> 2) It can't plan ahead, it can only perform the compiling/linking.
> This is a problem if you for example want to embed it into a Makefile,
> but also if you want to modify the commands before running.
> 3) It's very inflexible in its options. It has for example an
> extra_linker_flags option, but it has a fixed position. Since linker
> flags tend to be very order dependent, this means it's often the wrong
> position. Likewise you can't choose it's exportation method, it always
> does some platform-specific thing (either exporting all or exporting a
> select set of symbols).
>
> These issues all boil down to «it does exactly what is was designed to
> do, don't expect anything more». It goes so deep that a redesign from
> scratch is inevitable to me.
>
> I'm dealing with these issues by using a radically different design in
> EU:B. I'm using builder roles for the compiler and linker that allow
> you to specify what you'd like them to do. The classes implementing
> these roles are essentially drivers for various compilers/linkers.
> These classes build action objects, that can either be executed, or
> turned into a command to be run (e.g. [qw/cc -o foo.o -c foo.c
> -Iheaders/]). There's a separate class that inspects perl's
> configuration uses that to instantiate the known compiler/linker with
> the right options, but the rest of the framework can be used
> independently.
>
> It's currently in a fairly early state (and rather lacking
> documentation); it's known to work on Linux, HP-UX and OS X but it is
> still being ported to other platforms (there is some code for Windows
> already). I can very much use some platform specialists for help
> there.
>
> Patches and comments are very welcome. The code is at
> https://github.com/Leont/extutils-builder

This is really cool stuff for the thing it's designed for. I'm pretty
sure, it will satisfy a hugh amount of developers.

Thanks, Leon
-- 
Jens Rehsack