[Tinyos-devel] Re: TEP 109

[David Gay]

Michael Newman [mailto:mnewman at dragonnorth.com]  wrote:
> The TEP specifies the use of a Perl script to set compile time options.
>
> This seems like yet another piece of Unix platform specific code in the
> build environment.

Well perl is readily available on Windows (not just under cygwin).
However I agree that it's a significant extra requirement on the build
environment.

> I wonder if we might not come up with another method. For the two items in
> this TEP I suggest using two files one called .sensor_new_args each line of
> the file is a new argument for nesC. The other called .sensor_common_boards
> each line of the vile is a sensor board name which will be added to the
> include path list.

Seems reasonable. But it brings up the issue of .platform files, which
are also perl code. If we're going to require perl to handle .platform
files, there seems little gain in avoiding it for .sensor files. The
motivations for these files being just perl code were:
a) implementation simplicity
b) in case something weird needs to be done

Reason b seems unlikely for sensors, but I'm less sure that's the case
for .platform files. Anybody else have any thoughts?

> nesC can then implement these in a platform independent way. I suggest
> adding a nesC command that reads a file as a list of arguments and frames
> each line of the file with a pattern. Below I call the command @, but have
> nothing invested in that name:
>
>     -@<prefix>@<suffix>@<filename>
>     - at -I@@.sensor_new_args
>
> Content of .sensor_new_args:
>     somedir

David Gay