OpenEuphoria

Re: ver 4.0 question

• Posted by CChris <christian.cuvier at agric?lture.gouv.?r> Jun 07, 2008
• 704 views

gshingles wrote:
> 
> Kat wrote:
> > 
> > A Eu download, such that, like some other software, you check what portions
> > you want to install. Even windoze installs like this. So you can check what
> > you want, and not check PCRE, or goto, or map, or find, or large file
> > support,
> > or etc.. Then you click ok, and the exe on your computer is made using only
> > what you checked. This might be handy even when making non-cross-OS apps.
> 
> OMG, sorry Kat that's a colossally bad idea, and not just in my opinion I
> would
> bet.
> 
> If I download someone else's Euphoria code I want to know that I won't have
> to recompile my Euphoria interpreter in order to run it.
> 
> It _is_ a good idea in terms of a configure option for people who want to
> compile
> their own interpreter for their own use, in for example an embedded
> application,
> but that's something that would be done by someone who already knows what they
> are doing.  Don't present options like that to the wider community, it will
> cause mass confusion and abandonment of the language.
> (If that sounds dire enough).
> 
> Gary

I will disagree with both of you  and therefore partially agree with both.

1/ The big issue with configuring the interpreter in a hardcoded way were
rightly underlined by Gary.

But it is an obvious truth, given the strong feelings that run across the users
of this list, that having a configurable Euphoria would make them feel safer,
rejecting any code that doesn't correspond to their liking, and being sure that
they don't get any speed-down due to a feature they didn"t want in the first
place.

I think Unix packages are able, when some option is not on a system and is
needed at some point, to prompt user about it and suggest to go feych it on the
Net and install it. After all, that's what happens when I happen to view web
pages in Traditional Chinese with IE, so this is not Unix related.

So.. a satisfactory solution would seem to be:
- have options at install time, and record them in some kind of .ini file
- When interpreter starts, it checks whether the contents are what he expects.
- on mismatch, interpreter asks user to confirm changes
- on executing a program that would require an uninstalled feature, same story
- If any change in interpreter config is validated, interpreter rebuilds itself
according to new config, updates ini file and restarts.

This would remove most of the confusion Gary is warning about, and would allow
... fanatics? no... diehards? neither, or not often... psychorigids? perhaps ...
to build Euphoria as they dream it should have remained for eternity. The end
result being that they would no longer feel threatened by progress on the
language if they see no use for themselves in them.

CChris