mk_language_shell.pl vs create_language.pl

[Andy Dougherty]

On Sat, 18 Sep 2010, James E Keenan wrote:

> So my feeling is:  Though interactive configuration seems to be prima facie
> newbie-friendly, it's actually of value only to masters of the program being
> configured.   And the effort we put into maintaining interactive programs
> doesn't really pass a cost/benefit test.  There *should* be ways of getting
> people started on Parrot relatively quickly.  I just don't think interactive
> programs are one of them.

I appreciate your perspective here.  For Configure.pl, I don't think the 
important question is whether or not Configure.pl should be interactive, 
but instead "If it doesn't work, how can the user correct Configure.pl's 
guesses?"  Personally, in such situations, I find answering interactive 
questions easier than hand-editing something like an autoconf-generated 
configure script, but others may disagree.  Still others may feel users 
with such problems should simply report their problems and wait for the 
next monthly release to fix them.

Back on topic -- There should be a way to fix up the tool's guesses,
in case it guesses incorrectly.  However, since the tool is generating
templates which may well need editing anway, I tend to agree with
kid51 here.  I suspect effort could better be placed towards producing 
well-commented output files than towards making the tool interactive.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		doughera at lafayette.edu