[m-users.] Installing a subset of built grades

[Julien Fischer]

On Tue, 28 May 2013, Mark Green wrote:

> I'm currently having some problems compiling the non-native grades of
> Mercury13.03 on MingW, but the native grades compiled fine (after the
> first failure I was able to used the successfully installed native
> grades to bootstrap the next attempts).

By, "non-native", I assume you mean the non-C grades?  What were the
problems you encountered?

> However whenever I try to do the install again, the make script
> insists on building all of the already-existing native grades, and
> then goes to install them, generating nothing but a series of
> "<filename> is unchanged" messages but having spent an hour or more
> building the grade.  Is there any way to tell the installer which
> grades to install without reconfiguring the project, or to tell it not
> to install grades that have already been installed successfully?

No.  (If you're feeling brave you can hack some Mmakefiles and, after
installation, edit Mercury.config to conform with any changes, then
in most circumstances it's possible.)

> (Perhaps it could store hashes for each successfully installed file in
> a grade, and if the existing file matches the hash it does not build
> it again?)

Fundamentally, the current system is a one shot thing, where the "make
install" step means install the system + build and install the libraries
in a bunch of grades.  As currently implemented, it's not designed for
doing post-installation installation of more library grades.

Cheers,
Julien.