[jamming] Spam: Re: Majam - keeping jam up-to-date

[Tim Sneddon]

Alen Ladavac [mailto:alenl-ml at croteam.com] wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> First of all, thanks for the detailed info.

No problem :-)

> 
> > 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.
> 
> The problem here is different (at least for me, but I believe 
> the same issue also appears at Perforce at least). It's about 
> maintaining a multi-platform build of a set of projects. In 
> this case, path names cannot be specified in a "native" 
> format, because there is none. The jam's original approach 
> with SLASH et al. works, but I find paths with several 
> directories in them look very awkward to read.

Hmmm... I guess I see your point.

> 
> So perhaps it should allowed to specify the input paths in 
> either (a) "native format" (whatever it is on the host 
> platform) or be "neutral format" (forward slashes)? In the 
> approach I've already implemented, the output is strictly 
> controlled in each action by whether you specify the :\ 
> modifier on an argument when using it in an action, or not.
> 

I like this idea. The forward slashes "neutral format" sounds
good as there is already a lot of work that's been done on VMS
in the interested of UN*X friendliness. It would be easy to make
use of the decc$xxx() functions so as to keep behaviour consistent
across all software that makes use of UN*X style pathnames.

Regards, Tim.