[m-dev.] putting all those little files in subdirectories

[Peter Schachte]

On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Fergus Henderson wrote:

> On 16-Mar-1998, Peter Schachte <pets at students.cs.mu.oz.au> wrote:
> > I'd like to suggest three other things to consider.  Firstly, as an
> > alternative to the two "slicings" you mention above, it might be best
> > to put all the generated files into one subdirectory.  This cuts even
> > further the pollution of the user's directory with mercury-generated
> > files he doesn't want to be bothered with.
> 
> I think the reduction in pollution is a good idea, but everything-in-
> one-subdirectory is probably not (except for backwards compatibility).
> 
> So, as an alternative to the original proposal,
> how about
> 
> 	Mercury/ints/foo.int
> 	Mercury/ints/bar.int
> 	Mercury/cs/foo.c
> 	Mercury/cs/bar.c
> 	Mercury/os/foo.o
> 	Mercury/os/bar.o
> 
> or
> 
> 	Mercury/foo.dir/foo.int
> 	Mercury/foo.dir/foo.c
> 	Mercury/foo.dir/foo.o
> 	Mercury/bar.dir/bar.int
> 	Mercury/bar.dir/bar.c
> 	Mercury/bar.dir/bar.o
> 
> (depending on which way you want to slice them)?

Good solution.

> > Finally, and orthogonally
> > to either of these issues, some users might prefer if you began
> > subdirectory names with a ".".  Again, an issue of directory
> > pollution.
> 
> Names beginning with "." are usually more trouble than they are worth.
> 
> If there's only one subdirectory name, then the directory pollution
> should be acceptable.  It seems to be acceptable for `CVS' and `RCS',
> for example.

Ok, if there's just one Mercury subdirectory, that would be fine.

> The slicing on extension approach seems much nicer
> than the slicing on module name approach, so if it it doesn't
> make much difference, then we go with just the former.

That would be simpler.  Though if it doesn't make much difference, why not
put them all in one Mercury subdirectory? 


-Peter Schachte			| A person cannot do right in one department
pets at cs.mu.OZ.AU		| of life whilst attempting to do wrong in
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pets/	| another department. Life is one indivisible
PGP key available on request	| whole. -- Mahatma Gandhi