New DIY rep structure

[johnsonjh]

• Transferred from https://sourceforge.net/p/mtt/feature-requests/3/
  • Status: open
  • Owner: Geraint Paul Bevan
  • Labels: DIY representation (4)
  • Priority: 5
  • Updated: 2002-04-25
  • Created: 2002-04-25
  • Creator: Peter Gawthrop
  • Private: No

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As discussed, we need a new DIY rep.

Here is what I propose:

Implementation:

I think I made the wrong decision to confine the DIY rep implementation to a Makefile. I think we should use shell-scripts as for the built-ins. These could, of course, include a Makefile (as does MTT). However, I do think it best to include all the languages in the one script, and the script always returns 2 (or some other non-zero error) if it does not implement a particular language.

Interface:

We extend mtt to include representation-specific options:

• mtt [mtt-options] sys [rep-options] newrep lang

mtt then tries to run:

• mtt_rep_newrep [rep-options] lang

...if the rep does not exist, mtt proper is invoked (as at present). But this also happens if mtt_rep_newrep returns 2 as above.

I think this overcomes the problem you mention in the previous mail. That is, newrep can extend (or indeed replace) built-in representations to include new languages.

All DIY reps can be interrogated by mtt e.g.:

• mtt_rep_newrep --help writes helpful text to standard output
• mtt_rep_newrep --usage writes usage info to standard output
• mtt_rep_newrep --texi wites texinfo documentation to standard output

This provides the basis for a comprehensive help facility in mtt.

I like the idea of a single file for all of this; thus the script would contain other files and write them as
necessary.

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