[jamming] Path specification (was: Majam - keepingjamup-to-date)

[Johan Nilsson]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jamming-bounces at perforce.com 
> [mailto:jamming-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of David Turner
> Sent: den 11 augusti 2006 17:29
> To: Kai Backman
> Cc: Tim Sneddon; jamming at perforce.com
> Subject: Re: [jamming] Path specification (was: Majam - 
> keepingjamup-to-date)
> 
> 

[snip]

> >
> I don't think there is a risk if we limit it to native->portable.
> >> - Why would we need to add specific support for VMS file versions ?
> >>   it seems to me that Jam already works correctly on this platform
> >>   (e.g. $(somepath:S) will return the extension, without 
> the version
> >> number)
> >
> > Which means we already have implicit support for them, don't we? :-)
> >
> Yes, much probably :-)
> > I just wanted to provide the version information for explicit 
> > manipulation and to support lossless modification on the
> > VMS->portable->VMS path. Piggybacking on the filename is 
> obviously an
> > option, except it feels a bit kludgy on VMS. Other platforms can 
> > safely ignore versions, so I don't see too much harm with 
> making them 
> > explicit. I assume that a *nix/win32 project would never see them.
> >
> I don't think that Jam (and the Jambase) itself supports 
> losless modifications when it handles pathnames. For example, 
> consider the following:
> 
>    SOURCE = [ Glob $(DOT) : *.c ] ;   # returns "source.c;24" ;
>    OBJECT  = $(SOURCE:S=.obj)
> 
> I don't think that keeping the 24 in $(OBJECT) has any 
> meaningful use, and I'm pretty certain it's discarded.

Agreed - there's no point in keeping the version number.

> 
> Similarly, if the user passes to the build script a filename 
> containing a version number, lossless modification would only 
> make sense if the value is going to be used "as is", instead 
> of being processed (e.g. to generate other names)

I think support for keeping version numbers could be safely dropped.
IMHO one should always refer to the latest version in the build scripts
anyway.

/ Johan