Re: Changes to make fptools insfrastructure usable for standalone libraries

[I know you're busy with the new release at the moment - so feel free to delay 
until it's out the door.]

After setting up the X11/mk/*.mk files you suggested (see recent commits in 
fptools/libraries/X11) things worked pretty well (with your modified 
package.mk file).

That is, I can now:

  cd fptools
  autoconf
  ./configure --with-greencard
  cd libraries/X11
  make install


Some remaining issues:

1) There was nothing including version.mk so it tried to install in 
/usr/lib/ghc-6.0.

   I couldn't figure out what was making it pick up the ghc
   settings (presumably from ghc/mk/version.mk) but adding:

     -include $(TOP)/mk/version.mk

  at the end of fptools/libraries/X11/boilerplate.mk seemed to fix this.

2) For some reason, the code at the head of package.mk wasn't working.

    ifneq "$(GHC_DRIVER_DIR)" ""
    STANDALONE_PACKAGE = NO
    else
    STANDALONE_PACKAGE = YES
    endif

   That is, it was setting STANDALONE_PACKAGE to NO.
   This may well be connected with erroneously picking up the ghc
   version info?

   For now I have fixed this by putting this in target.mk:

     # This is a standalone library.  That is, it is not (and cannot be)
     # built as part of the ghc build process but is built later after
     # you have installed GHC.
     STANDALONE_PACKAGE = YES

   But that would require changes to all existing packages.  (This may not
   be unreasonable though?)

3) Given the choice of install location
   (usr/lib/${ProjectNameShort}-${ProjectVersion}), I decided that 
   X11 was a bad name for the project and settled on HSX11.  This means
   it gets installed in 

     /usr/local/lib/HSX11-1.0

   This directory name isn't bad but better ones may well exist.
   (I'm also thinking that including the compiler name and version number
    would be a good idea.)

4) The little TOP/FPTOOLS_TOP/THIS_PACKAGE_TOP dance:

   LIBRARY_TOP := $(TOP)
   TOP:=$(TOP)/..
   include $(TOP)/mk/boilerplate.mk
   TOP:=$(LIBRARY_TOP)
 
 is a bit awkward (and confuses the hell out of me when I go looking at
 fptools/mk files).  Any chance of fixing this properly by having each
 standalone project (eg ghc, HSX11, happy, etc.) setup:

   PROJECT_TOP = .
   FPTOOLS_TOP = <wherever you feel like>
   GHC_TOP     = $(FPTOOLS_TOP)/ghc # optional

 and replace all current uses of $(TOP) with the appropriate choice of TOP?

5) A possibly related issue is that when I distribute the X11 library, I'd
 prefer to have fptools be a subdirectory of X11 not the other way around (or
 have it as a debian package that I install before building X11).  Then I'd
 set

  FPTOOLS_TOP=$(TOP)/fptools

 or, maybe,

  FPTOOLS_TOP=/usr/lib/fptools-1.0

 in X11/mk/boilerplate.mk

6) It's not a big deal but...

  It looks to me as though bootstrap.mk only exists for installing
  ghc from .hc files so maybe it ought to be in fptools/ghc/mk.
  (I guess it's not because fptools/libraries probably builds from .hc
  files too?)

  As I say, no big deal.

--
Alastair Reid