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Subject: Re: Support for shell variables in the EPICS build system
From: Remi Machet <[email protected]>
To: Andrew Johnson <[email protected]>
Cc: "Ernest L. Williams Jr." <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:56:34 -0800
Hi Andrew,

I am used to work on multiple projects at the same time and I have seen
over the years that even on a single project, having multiple 'views' of
a software can increase quite a lot productivity (like a base with extra
printf and one other clean). I am trying to setup an EPICS environment
that can do exactly that for myself.

If you are afraid of breaking others, a solution would be to use a flag
in the RELEASE file to enable the feature. In any case your idea of
using an include should work and I will try using it.

I would suggest modifying convertRelease.pl to at least explicitly
refuse using environment variables (ie : display an error message when
one is found), because it can get extremely confusing for newbies (right
now the variable is just replaced by '').

Thanks for helping me!

Remi

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 12:11 -0600, Andrew Johnson wrote:
> Hi Remi,
> 
> On Tuesday 09 December 2008 11:30:18 Remi Machet wrote:
> >
> > I would like to add support for shell variables in convertRelease.pl
> > (see example patch bellow that is against R3.14.9).
> 
> One problem with including this patch in Base is that it would affect the 
> production environments at other sites as well as your development 
> environment, so although it would make things easier for you, it could break 
> someone else's production build system (they might now be relying on 
> convertRelease.pl *not* reading environment variables, although I do admit 
> this would be a little unusual).
> 
> > I have been told that this issue was already raised some time ago but
> > nothing was changed. Looking at the archives I found a post from Ralph
> > Lange on Tue, 27 May 2003 titled "Re: convertRelease.pl" which makes a
> > good case against using shell variables.
> >
> > But in my opinion Ralph makes a case about why some of us should not use
> > shell variables, not why no one should be able to ... I totally agree
> > that using shell variables in a production environment can be dangerous
> > and is in my mind not worth it, but in a development environment it can
> > be extremely powerful (for example to find out at which version of base
> > an IOC can work with).
> 
> I have a question about your environment - how are you setting those variables 
> in the first place?  The convertRelease.pl script does support both include 
> and -include statements in the configure/RELEASE file, so might there be some 
> way to have those variables reflected in another file that just gets included 
> by the RELEASE file?  I believe the path to the include file can be relative 
> or absolute, so at one extreme you could have all your configure/RELEASE 
> files just include a common file somewhere that just sets variables for all 
> your installed support modules.
> 
> With a bit more information about what you're trying to achieve we may be able 
> to come up with a solution for you.
> 
> > I am sorry if I am re-opening an already closed issue, but I believe
> > that supporting shell variables, while not for every project could
> > greatly help some of us.
> 
> Discussion is good, as long as it is informed by history - you did your 
> research first, so no apology necessary.
> 
> - Andrew


Replies:
Re: Support for shell variables in the EPICS build system Andrew Johnson
References:
Support for shell variables in the EPICS build system Remi Machet
Re: Support for shell variables in the EPICS build system Andrew Johnson

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