Preparation

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This is the most voluminous phase. No predefined plugin is called here, but a script stored as part of the module itself. It is expected in a file named PREPARE. This file will be removed from the distribution by the general code executed here, as part of procedure ::makedist::prepare. Another must-have is DESCRIPTION. It contains the central, fundamental description of the distributed module. The version number used for distribution is taken from this file. See the one distributed as part of makedist for an example of its contents.

There are some other special files recognized by the code, but them missing does no harm to the system, as would be the case with the previous two. Fact is that the supporting package contains procedures to derive the first 2 out from the contents of DESCRIPTION.

• ANNOUNCE
• LSM
• README

The system will search them in the module's directory and subdirectories doc, documentation, in that order. All found will be automatically copied into the area of support files. This is a sibling to the module's directory, named sup.XX, XX actually the name of the module itself. The preparation script has no need to know this, but the 2 following phases do.

Note: As the version number to be used is known now (see above), it will be appended to the incoming module name. This is the name used throughout the whole phase and it is communicated back to the caller, so that the last phases will know it too.

Everything we talked about till now happens before the module specific preparation code is run. This is now done, in a separate interpreter. The environment set up for the code includes:

• Preloaded packages: Pool_Base and Makedist_Support. The script is free to load additional packages, if desired or necessary.
• The array variable mInfo, plus variables derived from it and its contents. For every key @X@ of mInfo a global variable X is generated, with the same value.
• The array variable 'mDesc', containing the contents of DESCRIPTION.
• The array variable 'mOpt', containing all options given to the engine, together with their values.
• Access to the logging mechanism, via ::makedist::Log, which is available under the name mLog.

After the module specific preparation only a few things are left to be done. These are the removal of PREPARE and the generation of a manifest listing all files in the module.

In addition the contents of 'mOpt' are read back, to allow transfer of information to the now following pack and transport phases.

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