[lazarus] Text file database as a first step...?

[Stefan Weber]

Marco van de Voort wrote:

>>>while lazarus packages are typically made by users.
>>>
>>>It is natural to keep that apart.
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Reading this, I would suggest having a look at 
>>http://www.suigeneris.org/want/ as a build tool.
>>
>>Want is XML based, written in Delphi and does its job quite well. One 
>>major advantage of
>>Want is, that is does not depend on shell commands.
>>    
>>
>
>I don't like XML for manual editing. I prefer .ini files, or keyword
>based config files over them. 
>
I agree that XML is not very human-readable and should be edited using a 
GUI editor which is yet to be created...
On the other hand it is not that hard to write once you've spent a 
little time with it, i've tried it qith a number of projects, most of 
them could be setup using cut'n'paste.

The advantage of XML is that it maps directly to the internal object 
structure used in Want.

>Also the system requirements must be really low (preferably depend on RTL
>only, and _maybe_ on classes)
>
The Idea of Want is to include all necessary funtionality for the build 
process and releated tasks. Therefore it uses a lot of library stuff, 
namely the JCL and JAL (a library written by the author of Want and 
included with the source).
We need not port all of the Want-Tasks to start with. Some of them are 
responsible for quite a number of Uses,
e.g. FTP upload.

>  
>
>>On the downside its written using Interfaces here and there, which makes 
>>porting to FPC a little
>>more work than usual. Maybe we could use a Kylix/Delphi version until 
>>FPCs Interfaces
>>implementation is stable (its in 1.1, isn't it?)
>>    
>>
>
>Needing 1.1 to compile isn't that bad I think, but transfering without
>having it run under FPC native is absolutely out of the question.
>
>Licensing and the fact that FPC is more than just Delphi/linux-i386 (and a
>few major linuxes only even).
> 
>  
>
>>What do you think?
>>    
>>
>
>There don't seem to be much docs, so it is hard to say.
>
You can have a look at the docs for ANT (the Java build tool which 
inspired WANT) which follows
the same structure.

>I see a lot of units that import windows or VCL/CLX classes though.
>
Which? I've just checked the source and found no VCL/CLX stuff except 
for IniFiles.pas
and the Win32 stuff is just for the console window.

-Stefan