[jamming] Path specification (was: Majam - keeping, jamup-to-date)

[Alen Ladavac]

Kai wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Mihai Christodorescu <mihai at cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> Why not make all paths be in portable mode by default? You would have to
>> specify :N for a path in native format, otherwise no specification would
>> be needed.
>  The reason is we don't know what is a path and what isn't. Jam will
> frequently get input from sources like environment variables or files
> produced by scripts like configure. Some of these may be paths, most
> of the paths probably in native format. The catch is, we don't know
> which are paths and which are just string. Just looking at the
> characters might tell us the string is a valid path but it might
> actually be used for something else and we mangle it. In other words,
> we have to rely on the writer of the script to tag the valid paths
> using the :I modifier.

>  Jam itself would only recognize internal paths, everything else is
> just an opaque string.

I believe that Kai and Mihai are saying the same thing here:

Jam internally uses only paths in internal format. Therefore:
1) Script writers have to tag those native paths with :I (if the paths
originate from some external source like an envvar).
2) Paths written directly in jam scripts do not have to be tagged in
any way.
3) Items used in action strings have to be tagged :N because the
commands will expect them to be in native format.

Am I right?


Alen