On Sat, May 10, 2025, 4:35 PM Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 09, 2025 at 04:33:44PM -0400, Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou > wrote: > > Hello lists, > > > > I rewrote GNU m4 in Python. Long story short, I wanted to learn m4 to > > fix some issues I had with GNU Guile and Autotools, and after > > realizing m4 1.4 is ~8000 lines of code and reading e.g. > > <https://www.owlfolio.org/development/autoconf-swot/> which claims > > "Feature gaps in GNU M4 hold back development of Autoconf." I thought > > I'd rewrite it in Rust. (It turned out to be more beneficial to > > rewrite in Python due to faster prototyping for the time being.) > > Eventually I plan to get back to my original purpose of fixing the > > integration of GNU Guile and Autotools. > > > > You can find the project home page here, > > <https://codeberg.org/annoyingusername/m4p> and you can install with > > pip via `pip install m4p`. > > I've checked out the repository, but the README.txt was very sparse at > the command line I should use to build and install the binary into any > place where I can quickly use it. I'd rather run it from git than > from a pip checkout (so that I can experiment with patching your code > and instantly testing those results, rather than having to wait for > the next release to land on pip). > > My initial attempt, 'python m4p', fails: > > $ python m4p > /usr/bin/python: can't find '__main__' module in '/home/eblake/m4p/m4p' > > and this also fails: > > $ python m4p/main.py > /home/eblake/m4p/m4p/main.py:18: DeprecationWarning: pkg_resources is > deprecated as an API. See > https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/pkg_resources.html > import pkg_resources > Traceback (most recent call last): > File "/home/eblake/m4p/m4p/main.py", line 20, in <module> > from m4p.stream import Stream > ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'm4p' > > Maybe it's my naivete with python, but unless I can figure out how to > run your code, I can't compare it against the C version to spot out > where you are still incomplete in your implementation. > Try this in the source dir (one time only): python3 -m venv .venv source .venv/bin/activate pip install -U pip setuptools wheel pip install -e .[tests] Then anytime you want to try the software navigate to the source directory and do: source .venv/bin/activate To activate the environment and use "m4p" directly as a command. Any changes you make to the source code should be reflected in that m4p script. I will add the instructions in the Readme too later today. Regards, Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou
