[jamming] Majam - keeping jam up-to-date

[Johan Nilsson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jamming-bounces at perforce.com 
> [mailto:jamming-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Tim Sneddon
> Sent: den 11 augusti 2006 05:10
> To: jamming at perforce.com
> Subject: Re: [jamming] Majam - keeping jam up-to-date
> 
> David Turner [mailto:dturner at nds.com] wrote:
> > Regarding MacOS, Jam was never used to drive the build 
> anyway, all it 

[snip]

> 
> > Is there any specific reason why this wouldn't be practical for VMS 
> > users ?
> > 
> 
> My only concern is that the user will need to write their 
> Jamfiles using UN*X syntax. This is something I *don't* like. 
> One of the things I like about VMS is it's file specification 
> mechanism. It can be a little scary at first, but it is 
> uniform, complete and very usable. I would imagine that most 
> VMS users would see using UN*X file specifications as a backward step.

I'd have to disagree, but that's probably because I don't have any
VMS-only projects. When the projects are cross-platform and you want to
maintain a single Jamfile for several platforms, a single way of
specifying paths would be a Good Thing. When you need VMS-specific stuff
they could still be used like e.g.:

/disk$user1:/myself/data/temp.txt/3 (or perhaps .../temp.txt;3,
.../temp.txt.3)

> 
> As long as file specs are output and input in their native 
> format it's not a problem to operate on UN*X specs 
> internally. Of course, not that it would probably cause much 
> hassle it should be noted that VMS also supports file version numbers.

There's an (unrelated) problem IIRC (it's been more than a year since I
"touched" the DEC CXX compiler, so forgive me if this isn't 100% with
respect to terms and details):

When using paths in the include statements, e.g.: "#include
<foo/bar.h>", the parent directory of 'foo' must be fed to the compiler
with the help of a rooted logical. This caused Jam not being able to
detect if certain header files where changed.

> 
> I would be happy to answer any questions, or help if I can 
> with any VMS related questions/issues/etc.

Well, there's one implicit above ...

Thanks / Johan