[fpc-pascal] Searching for files all over the disk

[Juha Manninen]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Jürgen Hestermann <
juergen.hestermann at gmx.de> wrote:

> Well, it is a bad idea to wildly scan directory branches "just in case" at
> all.
> That's fooling so many people and there is no good reason for doing so.
> Only paths specified by the user (i.e. in config) should be searched.
> This bug reports makes it totaly obvious.
> Beeing too smart is never a good idea (for a program).
> The only outcome of such things is that users don't understand what is
> happening.
> I would not want any program to heavily scan my disk(s) and pick up any
> file that seems
> to fit for whatever then doing things to (or with) it I cannot control
> anymore.
>

Which people exactly are getting fooled?

Lots of heuristics and guessing is involved when converting a random Delphi
project.
Most projects still cannot be fully converted but the success rate can be
increased with many tricks.
Scanning the parent directory improves it a lot!
The converter is not "too smart", it is rather still "too dummy" as it
cannot convert all projects.

About scanning "only paths specified by the user", do you really mean the
user should search for pascal sources in a to-be-converted Delphi project
directories, then type the directory names into a config file and then feed
that file to the converter's GUI?
IMO that is a job for the converter because its whole purpose is to
automate the task. You can still do it manually if you like of course.

Did you ever try converting a non-trivial Delphi project? Try it and you
get an idea of the challenges.


Regards,
Juha
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freepascal.org/pipermail/fpc-pascal/attachments/20120821/027799c8/attachment.html>