From: bc@freeuk.com   
      
   On 29/10/2025 20:33, Waldek Hebisch wrote:   
   > bart  wrote:   
   >> On 26/10/2025 16:04, Scott Lurndal wrote:   
   >>> bart  writes:   
   >>>> On 26/10/2025 06:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>>   
   >>>> However the A68G configure script is 11000 lines; the CDECL one 31600   
   lines.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> (I wonder why the latter needs 20000 more lines? I guess nobody is   
   >>>> curious - or they simply don't care.)   
   >>>   
   >>> You should be able to figure that out yourself.  You may actually   
   >>> learn something useful along the way.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> So you don't know.   
   >>   
   >> What special requirements does CDECL have (which has a task that is at   
   >> least a magnitude simpler than A68G's), that requires those 20,000 extra   
   >> lines?   
   >   
   > I did not look deeply, but cdecl is using automake and related   
   > tools.  IIUC you can have small real source, and depend on   
   > autools to provide tests.  This is likely to bring tons of   
   > irrelevant tests into configure.  Or you can specify precisely   
   > which tests are needed.  In the second case you need to   
   > write more code, but generated configure is smaller.   
   >   
   > My working hypotesis is that cdecl is relatively simple program,   
   > so autotools defaults lead to working build.  And nobody was   
   > motiveted enough to select what is needed, so configure   
   > contains a lot of code which is useful sometimes, but probably   
   > not for cdel.   
   >   
   > BTW: In one "my" project there is hand-written configure.ac   
   > which is select tests that are actually needed for the   
   > project.  Automake in _not_ used.  Generated configure   
   > has 8564 lines.  But the project has rather complex   
   > requirements and autotools defaults are unlikely to   
   > work, so one really have to explicitly handle various   
   > details.   
   >   
      
      
   I have a project coming up next month: a subset of my C compiler, which   
   is not written in C, being ported to actual C.   
      
   What I'm thinking of doing is taking part of that project, and creating   
   a standalone program that does the 'explain' part of cdecl, and only for   
   C, not C++. This would not worth doing by itself.   
      
   Then I can make that available to see how it looks and how it builds.   
      
   But I do not expect it to need anything other than a C compiler, and it   
   should work on any OS (it needs only a keyboard and a display).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)