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path: root/reproduce/software/config/software_acknowledge_context.sh
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2020-06-17Text surrounding software acknowledgements as a configuration fileBoud Roukema-0/+112
Until now, the English texts that embeds the list of software to acknowledge in the paper was hard-wired into the low-level coding ('reproduce/software/shell/configure.sh' to be more specific). But this file is very low-level, thus discouraging users to modify this surrounding text. While the list of software packages can be considered to be 'data' and is fixed, the surrounding text to describe the lists is something the authors should decide on. Authors of a scientific research paper take responsibility for the full paper, including for the style of the acknowledgments, even if these may well evolve into some standard text. With this commit, authors who do *not* modify 'reproduce/software/config/acknowledge_software.sh' will have a default text, with only a minor English correction from earlier versions of Maneage. However, Authors choosing to use their own wording should be able to modify the text parameters in `reproduce/software/config/acknowledge_software.sh` in the obvious way. This is much more modular than asking project authors to go looking into the long and technical 'configure.sh' script. Systematic issues: the file `reproduce/software/config/acknowledge_software.sh` is an executable shell script, because it has to be called by `reproduce/software/shell/configure.sh`, which, in principle, does not yet have access to `GNU make` (if I understand the bootstrap sequence correctly). It is placed in `config/` rather than `shell/`, because the user will expect to find configuration files in `config/`, not in `shell/`. A possible alternative to avoid having a shell script as a configure file would be to let `reproduce/software/config/acknowledge_software.sh` appear to be a `make` file, but analyse it in `configure.sh` using `sed` to remove whitespace around `=`, and adding other hacks to switch from `make` syntax to `shell` syntax. However, this risks misleading the user, who will not know whether s/he should follow `make` conventions or `shell` conventions.