Re: How to ship native modules?

["Göktuğ Kayaalp" <self@gkayaalp.com>]

> (eval-when-compile (shell-command "make"))

Mind that this can cause problems in a system where ‘make’ points to
sth. else than GNU Make, e.g. on BSDs it's bmake.  I'd rather have

(defconst my-module-C-extensions-compiled-p
  (= 0
     (eval-when-compile (shell-command (or (executable-find "gmake")
                                           "make")))))

but maybe it would be better to introduce some standard machinery for
native modules (at least for those in C) early on that later the
community won't have to deal with fragmentation over different ad-hoc
systems.  At least a standard way to define how to build the module
would be nice:

(define-dynamic-module example
  :path "/path/to/module"
  :compile-method gnu-make)

;; (build-dynamic-module 'example)

That can be included in NAME-pkg.el for packaging and distributing
modules (or maybe define-package may be extended for building dynamic
modules of a package).  Certain make recipes like ‘all’ and ‘test’ may
be required.

Regards,
-gk.