Webs, Tangling and Weaving. How to use Inweb to weave or tangle a web already written. @h All-in-one webs. A program written for use with Inweb is called a "web". Inweb was primarily designed for large, multisection webs, but it can also be used in a much simpler way on smaller webs. In this documentation we'll call those "all-in-one webs", meaning that there is just a single source code file for the program. Such a file should be a UTF-8 encoded plain text file with the file extension |.inweb|. The following is a "hello world" example, which can be found in the Inweb distribution as |inweb/Examples/hellow.inweb|: = (text as Inweb) Title: hellow Author: Graham Nelson Purpose: A minimal example of a C program written for inweb. Language: C @ = #include int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { printf("Hello world!\n"); } @ This of course is just a regular C "hello world" program written below the |@ =| marker, and some metadata written above it. The metadata above is called the "contents section": for a larger web, it would expand out to something more like a contents page, though here it's more like a title page. The Title, Author and Purpose make no functional difference to the program produced - they are purely descriptive - but the Language setting is another matter, as we shall see. The contents end, and the code begins, when the first "paragraph" begins. Code in an Inweb web is divided into paragraphs. The core Inform compiler currently has 8362 paragraphs, whereas |hellow| has just one. (If you are reading this documentation in a web page or a PDF, you will see that it's divided up into little numbered sections: those are individual paragraphs from the |inweb| web.) More on this below, but the use of an |@| character in column 1 of the web file is what marks a paragraph break. As mentioned earlier, there are two basic things we can do with a web: tangle, to make a program ready to compile and run; and weave, to make a comfortably legible version for human eyes instead. Let's now tangle: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/hellow.inweb -tangle web "hellow": 1 section(s) : 1 paragraph(s) : 9 line(s) tangling (written in C) = And |inweb/Examples/hellow.c| is now a regular C program which can then be compiled. If we had wanted it to be written somewhere else, or called something else, we could have used |-tangle-to F| to specify a file |F| to create instead. In general, you never need to look at or edit tangled code, but if we take a look at this one to see what has happened, two things are worth noting. (a) First, the use of the |#line| C preprocessor feature, which ensures that any compilation errors occurring will be reported at the correct point of origin in the original Inweb file, not in the tangled file. (b) Secondly, notice that the |main| function has automatically been predeclared at the top of the file. Because Inweb does this for C programs, the programmer can freely call functions defined lower down in the source code, without having to write tiresome predeclarations or header files. (As it happens, there was no need in the case of |main|, but nor was there any harm.) = (text as C) /* Tangled output generated by inweb: do not edit */ #include #line 9 "inweb/Examples/hellow.inweb" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) ; #line 8 "inweb/Examples/hellow.inweb" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { printf("Hello world!\n"); } @ So much for tangling: we can also weave. |hellow| is so uninteresting to look at that this seems a good point to switch to |inweb/Examples/twinprimes.inweb|, a C program to find twin prime numbers. If we weave: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/twinprimes.inweb -weave web "twinprimes": 1 section(s) : 3 paragraph(s) : 55 line(s) [Complete Program: HTML -> inweb/Examples/twinprimes.html] = As with tangling, we can override this destination with |-weave-to F|, telling Inweb to weave into just a single file (which in this instance it was going to do anyway) and call it |F|; or we can similarly |-weave-into D|, telling Inweb to weave a set of file into the directory |D|, rather than the usual |Woven| subdirectory of the web in question. By default, |-weave| makes an HTML representation of the program. (On a larger web, with multiple sections, it would make a set of linked pages, but here there's just one.) This can then be looked at with a browser such as Chrome or Safari. HTML is not the only format we can produce. Inweb performs the weave by following a "pattern", and it has several patterns built in, notably |HTML|, |Ebook|, |TeX| and |PDFTeX|. Running Inweb with |-weave-as P| tells it to weave with pattern |P|; the plain command |-weave| is equivalent to |-weave-as HTML|. The |Ebook| pattern makes an EPUB file suitable for readers such as Apple's Books app, but that would be overkill for such a tiny program. Instead: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/twinprimes.inweb -weave-as PDFTeX = This will only work if you have the mathematical typesetting system TeX installed, and in particular, the |pdftex| tool. (This comes as part of the standard TeXLive distribution, so simply "installing TeX" on your platform will probably install |pdftex| automatically.) Now the response is like so: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/twinprimes.inweb -weave-as PDFTeX web "twinprimes": 1 section(s) : 3 paragraph(s) : 55 line(s) [Complete Program: PDF -> inweb/Examples/twinprimes.tex: 1pp 103K] = Inweb automatically creates |twinprimes.tex| and runs it through |pdftex| to produce |twinprimes.pdf|: it reads over the TeX log file to see how many pages that comes to, and reports back. All being well, the |.tex| and |.log| files are silently removed, leaving just |twinprimes.pdf| behind. @h Multi-section webs. The |twinprimes.inweb| example was a program so small that it could comfortably fit into one source file, but for really large programs, that would be madness. The core Inform compiler, for example, runs to about 210,000 lines of code, and distributes those across 418 source files called "sections", together with a special 419th section which forms its contents page. It's a matter of personal taste how much should be in a section, but an ideal section file might contain 500 to 1000 lines of material and weave to a standalone essay, describing and implementing a single well-defined component of the whole program. In this documentation, we'll call such webs "multi-section". A multi-section web is stored as a directory, whose name should be (a short version of) the name of the program. For example, Inweb's own source is in a directory called |inweb|. A web directory is a tidy, self-contained area in which the program can be written, compiled and used. Inweb expects that a multi-section web will contain at least two source files, each of which is a UTF-8 encoded text file with the file extension |.w|. One source file is special, must always be called |Contents.w|, and must be directly stored in the web directory. All other section files are stored in subdirectories of the web directory: (a) If the web is still relatively small, there may only be a few of these, stored in a single subdirectory called |Sections|. (b) Alternatively (not additionally), a larger web can use chapter subdirectories called |Manual|, |Preliminaries|, |Chapter 1|, |Chapter 2|, ..., |Appendix A|, |Appendix B|, ...; preliminaries and appendices being optional. (There can't be a Chapter 0, though there can be Appendix A, B, C, ..., L.) A multi-section web can contain a variety of other subdirectories as needed. Two in particular, |Woven| and |Tangled|, are automatically created by Inweb as needed to store the results of tangling and weaving, respectively: they are not intended to hold any material of lasting value, and can be emptied at any time and regenerated later. @ Uniquely, the |Contents.w| section provides neither typeset output nor compiled code: it is instead a roster telling Inweb about the rest of the web, and how the other sections are organised. It has a completely different syntax from all other sections. (It's essentially a fuller version of the top part of an all-in-one web file as demonstrated above, but now it occupies the whole file.) The contents section opens with some bibliographic data. For example: = (text as Inweb) Title: inter Author: Graham Nelson Purpose: For handling intermediate Inform code Language: InC Licence: Artistic License 2.0 Version Number: 1 Version Name: Axion = This is a simply a block of name-value pairs specifying some bibliographic details; there is then a skipped line, and the roster of sections begins. Note that the program's |Title| need not be the same as the directory-name for the web, which is useful if the program has a long or file-system-unfriendly name. The |Purpose| should be brief enough to fit onto one line. |Licence| can also have the US spelling, |License|; Inweb treats these as equivalent. Version number and name are, of course, optional. The |Language| is the programming language in which the code is written: much more on that later on, but for now, the important ones are probably |C|, |InC| and |Plain Text|. @ After the header block of details, then, we have the roster of sections. This is like a contents page -- the order is the order in which the sections are presented on any website, or in any of the larger PDFs woven. For a short, unchaptered web, we might have for instance: = (text) Sections Program Control Command Line and Configuration Scan Documentation HTML and Javascript Renderer = And then Inweb will expect to find, for instance, the section file |Scan Documentation.w| in the |Sections| directory. A larger web, however, won't have a "Sections" directory. It may have a much longer roster, such as: = (text) Preliminaries Preface Thematic Index Licence and Copyright Declaration BNF Grammar Chapter 1: Definitions "In which some globally-used constants are defined and the standard C libraries are interfaced with, with all the differences between platforms (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, Sugar/XO and so forth) taken care of once and for all." Basic Definitions Platform-Specific Definitions = ... and so on... = (text) Appendix A: The Standard Rules (Independent Inform 7) "This is the body of Inform 7 source text automatically included with every project run through the Inform compiler, and which defines most of what end users see as the Inform language." SR0 - Preamble SR1 - Physical World Model = ... and so on. Here the sections appear in directories called Preliminaries, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, ..., Appendix A. (There can't be a Chapter 0, though there can be Appendix B, C, ..., O; there can also be a Manual chapter, in the sense of documentation.) In case of any doubt we can use the following command-line switch to see how Inweb is actually reading the sections of a web |W|: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -catalogue -verbose = @h Tangling. At this point, it may be worth experimenting with a second mathematical example: |inweb/Examples/goldbach|, which is to do with a problem in number theory called the Goldbach Conjecture. This is a multi-section web, though really only for the sake of an example: it's still a very small web. This is once again a C program. Actually building and running this is a little trouble, of course, and because there are multiple source files, it's not so easy to keep track of whether the program is built up to date. So a convenience of Inweb is that it can make makefiles to help with this: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -makefile inweb/Examples/goldbach/goldbach.mk = With this done, = (text as ConsoleText) $ make -f inweb/Examples/goldbach/goldbach.mk = tangles and then compiles the program as necessary. The tangling part of that is nothing fancy - as before, it's just = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -tangle = Assuming all goes well: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Examples/goldbach/Tangled/goldbach = should then print out some results. @ It is legal in some circumstances to tangle only part of a web. This is done by specifying a "range", much as will be seen later with weaving - but because it's not normally meaningful to tangle only part of a program, the possible ranges are much more restricted. In fact, the only partial tangles allowed are for chapters or sections marked in the |Contents.w| as being "Independent". For example: = (text) Appendix A: The Standard Rules (Independent Inform 7) = declares that Appendix A is a sort of sidekick program, written in the language "Inform 7". As a result, it won't be included in a regular |-tangle|, and to obtain it we have to: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inform7 -tangle A = @ In some C programs, it's useful to require that a header file be added to a tangle. This can be done by adding: = (text) Header: H = to the contents page of a web. The heacer file |H| in question should then be stored in the web's |Headers| subdirectory. (At one time, the Foundation module used this to bring in a Windows-only header file.) @h Weaving. As with all-in-one webs, the commands for weaving are like so: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave-as PDFTeX = This will produce single HTML or PDF files of the woven form of the whole program. (Note that the PDF file now has a cover page: on a web with just a single section, this wouldn't happen.) But with a growing web, that can be cumbersome. @ After setting |-weave| or |-weave-as|, we can also optionally choose a range. The default range is |all|, so up to now we have implicitly been running weaves like these: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave all $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave-as PDFTeX all = The opposite extreme from |all| is |sections|. This still weaves the entire web, but now cuts it up into individual files, one for each section. For example, = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave sections = makes a miniature website; files include some CSS, and: = (text) inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/index.html inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/S-tgc.html inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/S-tsoe.html = Those abbreviated names |S-tgc| and |S-tsoe| are cut down from the full names of the sections involved, "The Goldbach Conjecture" and "The Sieve of Eratosthenes". Similarly, = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb inweb/Examples/goldbach -weave-as PDFTeX sections = creates the files: = (text) inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/index.html inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/S-tgc.pdf inweb/Examples/goldbach/Woven/S-tsoe.pdf = The index file here is a table of contents offering links to the PDFs. An intermediate level of granularity is the range |chapters|, which makes sense only for chaptered webs, and puts each chapter into its own file. @ Ranges can also be used to weave only part of a web: (a) In a chaptered web, chapters are abbreviated to just their numbers: for example, the range |2| means "just Chapter 2". The Preliminaries alone is |P|; the Manual, |M|. Appendix A, B, C are |A|, |B|, |C| and so on. (This is why Appendices can only run up to L.) (b) In an unchaptered web, |S| means "all the sections". This is almost but not quite the same as |all|: the cover sheet (a sort of title page) is omitted. (c) The abbreviation for a section makes a range of just that section. For example, |S/tgc| and |S/tsoe| in the Goldbach web example, or |2/ec| for the "Enumerated Constants" section of Chapter 2 of Inweb itself. Note that running Inweb with |-catalogue| shows all the sections of a web, and their abbreviations. If it's a nuisance that these section ranges are hard to predict, run with |-sequential| to have them simply be |X/s1|, |X/s2|, ..., within each chapter, where |X| is the chapter range. @h Weave tags. An alternative to a range is to specify a tag. Rather than weaving contiguous pieces of the web, this collates together all those paragraphs with a given tag. The result is a booklet of extracts. Most paragraphs are never tagged. A tag is simply a word; paragraphs can have multiple tags, but for each individual tags they either have it or don't. A very few tags are automatically applied by Inweb: If the program is for a C-like language, Inweb automatically tags any paragraph containing a |typedef struct| with the tag |Structures|. So, for example, = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb -weave-tag Structures = weaves just the structure definitions culled from a much larger web; this can make a convenient reference. Similarly, any paragraph containing an illustration is automatically tagged |Figures|, and any paragraph in an |InC| web which defines Preform grammar is automatically tagged |Preform|. (In the Inform project, this is used to generate the PDF of the formal syntax of the language.) All other tags must be typed by hand. If the line introducing a paragraph is marked at the end with |^"Fun"|, then that paragraph will be tagged as |Fun|, and so on. Paragraphs can have multiple tags: = (text as Inweb) @ ^"Algorithms" ^"History" The original version of the program used an in-place insertion sort, but ... = A tag can optionally supply a caption. For example: = (text as Inweb) @ ^"Algorithms: Sorting rulebooks" The original version of the program used an in-place insertion sort, but ... = Here the tag is just |Algorithms|, but when a |-weave-to Algorithms| is performed, the caption text "Sorting rulebooks" will be used in a subheading in the resulting booklet. Beyond that, an entire section can be tagged from the |Contents.w| page. For example: = (text) Sections The Goldbach Conjecture The Sieve of Eratosthenes ^"Greek" = tags every paragraph in the section "The Sieve of Eratosthenes" with the tag |Greek|. In this instance, a caption is not allowed. Note that if we |-weave-to| a tag which does not exist - or rather, which no paragraph in the range has - then rather than producing an empty document, Inweb will halt with an "empty weave request" error. @h Modules. Up to now, the webs described have all been self-contained: one web makes one program, and contains the code in its entirety. But Inweb also supports "modules". A module is simply a web which provides a compoment of a program but is not a program in its own right. For example, all of the Inform tools (including Inweb itself) make use of a module called |foundation|, which is written in InC and provides facilities for managing memory, manipulating strings, filenames, and so on. On the other hand, the Inform project also includes a module called |inter| which is used only by the core compiler |inform7| and by a wrapper utility also called |inter|; in fact, |inform7| is entirely divided up into modules, some of which are used only by itself. @ It makes little sense to tangle a module on its own. Instead, a web which wishes to use a module needs to declare this on its |Contents.w| page. This is done with a list of "imports", after the metadata but before the list of sections. For example, = (text) Import: foundation Chapter 1 Startup = ...and so on. When this new web is tangled, the module's code will tangled into it. Any functions or variables defined in the module will thus be available to the new web. However, it makes perfectly good sense to weave a module. For example: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb/foundation-module -weave sections = @ That's everything there is to say about modules, except where Inweb looks to find them. When it reads a request from a web |W| to import a module |M|, it looks for a web directory called |M-module| (note the hyphen). For example, |Import: fruit| would look for the directory |fruit-module|. Inweb tries the following locations, in sequence, until it finds it: (1) Directly inside |W|. (2) In the directory containing |W| (i.e., one directory higher up). (3) Directly inside Inweb's own web directory. (4) In the directory specified by |-import-from D| at the command line, if any. @h The section catalogue. Inweb can do a handful of other things. One is to list the contents of a web: (a) |-catalogue| (or |-catalog|) lists the sections in the web. (b) |-structures| lists the sections, and all of the structure definitions made in them (for C-like languages). (c) |-functions| lists the sections, with all structure definitions and also all function definitions. In addition, for debugging purposes, |-scan| shows how Inweb is parsing lines of source code in the web, and |-verbose| makes it generally print out more descriptive output. @h Makefile. As mentioned earlier, Inweb can construct a suitable makefile for a web: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -makefile M = creates a makefile for the web |W| and stores it in |M|. For example, = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb inweb -makefile inweb/inweb.mk = The makefile is constructed using a prototype file called a "makescript". Ordinarily the script used will be the one stored in = (text) W/W.mkscript = or, if no such file exists, the default one stored in Inweb: = (text) inweb/Materials/default.mkscript = but this can be changed by using |-prototype S|, which tells Inweb to use |S| as the script. If a |-prototype| is given, then there's no need to specify any one web for Inweb to use: this allows Inweb to construct more elaborate makefiles for multi-web projects. @ A makescript is really just copied out to produce the makefile, except that: (*) Comment lines, those beginning with |#|, are stripped out. (*) Material in balanced braces |{ ... }| is expanded into something more interesting. (*) Literal braces can be written with a backslash, |\{| and |\}|, which expand just into |{| and |}|. Literal backslashes are written |\\|, which "expands" to |\|. A backslash is not allowed to precede any other character, so something like |\fish| produces an error message. @ Makescripts support variables, whose names have to be in capital letters, perhaps with underscores and digits added. For example: = (text) {set name: SUPPORTED_BUILDS value: 6L02, 6L38, 6M62} ... echo "I support any of {SUPPORTED_BUILDS}." = expands to = (text) echo "I support any of 6L02, 6L38, 6M62." = What happens is that the |set| macro sets the variable |SUPPORTED_BUILDS| and gives it the value |6L02, 6L38, 6M62|. Anywhere below this in the file,[1] |{SUPPORTED_BUILDS}| is replaced by that value. [1] If you set a variable inside a repeat loop, it will exist only in the loop. @ Makescripts support repetition. For example: = (text) {repeat with: BUILD in: 6L02, 6L38, 6M62} echo "I support {BUILD}." {end-repeat} = produces: = (text) echo "I support 6L02." echo "I support 6L38." echo "I support 6M62." = @ Like |set|, |repeat| is a "macro". This has two parameters, |with:|, naming the loop variable, and |in:|, giving a comma-separated list of values for it to run through in order. In some macros parameters are optional, but not these. Note that variables can be used within the parameters of macros, as in this example: = (text) {repeat with: BUILD in: {SUPPORTED_BUILDS}} echo "I support {BUILD}." {end-repeat} = Loops can be nested, for those who like to live on the edge. So: = (text) {repeat with: X in: alpha, beta, gamma} {repeat with: Y in: 5, 11} echo "Greetings, Agent {X}-{Y}." {end-repeat} {end-repeat} = produces: = (text) echo "Greetings, Agent alpha-5." echo "Greetings, Agent alpha-11." echo "Greetings, Agent beta-5." echo "Greetings, Agent beta-11." echo "Greetings, Agent gamma-5." echo "Greetings, Agent gamma-11." = @ You can also define your own macros, as in this example: = (text) {define: link to: TO from: FROM ?options: OPTS} clang $(CCOPTS) -g -o {TO} {FROM} {OPTS} {end-define} = And here is a usage of it: = (text) {link from: frog.o to: frog.c} = This doesn't specify "options: ...", but doesn't have to, because that's optional -- note the question mark in the macro declaration. But it does specify "from: ..." and "to: ...", which are compulsory. Parameters are always named, as this example suggests, and can be given in any order so long as all the non-optional ones are present. This usage results in the following line in the final makefile: = (text) clang $(CCOPTS) -g -o frog.c frog.o = Note the difference between |$(CCOPTS)|, which is a make variable, and the braced tokens |{TO}|, |{FROM}| and |{OPTS}|, which are makescript variables (which exist only inside the definition). @ A few more built-in macros special to makefiles may be useful: (*) |{platform-settings}| (which has no parameters) includes a file of makescript material useful for compiling C-based tools on your current operating system or "platform". It gets this file at |inweb/Materials/platforms/YOURPLATFORM.mkscript|, where |YOURPLATFORM| may be |macos|, |windows|, |linux| and so on. (*) |{identity-settings}| (which has no parameters) writes out make declarations for make variables |INWEB|, |INTEST|, |MYNAME| and |ME|. The first two are paths to the inweb and intest tools respectivly. |MYNAME| and |ME| are set only if inweb has been given a specific web |W| to work with at the command line, and are then expanded to the directory name and web name respectively for |W|. (These are very often the same name, e.g., |inform7|.) (*) |{modify-filenames original: ORIGINAL suffix: SUFFIX prefix: PREFIX}|. Here both |suffix:| and |prefix:| are optional, but if neither is given then the result is that no modification occurs. The idea here is that ORIGINAL is a whitespace-divided list of filenames, as typically appears in a makefile, and that we modify each filename by applying the prefix or suffix to its unextended leafname. So, for example, |{modify-filenames original: peach.o others/*.o prefix: x86_ suffix: _v12}| would expand to |x86_peach_v12.o others/x86_*_v12.o|. (*) |{component symbol: SYMBOL webname: WEBNAME path: PATH set: SET type: TYPE}| is used only in a makescript for a makefile trying to orchestrate complicated operations on colonies of large numbers of webs. (See the |inform.mkscript| script in the main Inform repository for an example.) This macro says that one of the webs it will talk about is called |WEBNAME|, located at |PATH| in the file system, belongs to a set you want to call |SET|, has the |TYPE| of one of |tool|, |web| or |module|. (A |tool| is the main web for an executable; a |module| for one of the modules making up an executable; a |web| for some other kind of resource tangled by Inweb but which doesn't make an executable.) (*) |{dependent-files tool: WEBNAME}| then expands to a list of source files inside the web |WEBNAME| on which its tangled output depends, written in the usual make-file way, i.e., divided by spaces. |WEBNAME| has to be one which has already been declared as having |type: tool| in a |{component ...}| line. (*) And similarly |{dependent-files module: WEBNAME}|. (*) More elaborately, |{dependent-files tool-and-modules: WEBNAME}| lists the dependent files not only in the main web for a tool, which also in any of the modules which it includes. (*) A form of loop, |{components type: TYPE set: SET} ... {end-components}| repeats through all the declared components with the given type and set. (The set is optional: if not given, the repetition is over everything with that type.) As before, |TYPE| must be one of |tool|, |web| or |module|. Inside the loop, |{NAME}| expands to the |SYMBOL| which the component was declared with. For example: = (text) .PHONY: versions versions: {components type: tool} $({SYMBOL}X) -version {end-components} = @h Gitignore. A similar convenience exists for users who want to use the git source control tool with a web: for example, uploading it to Github. The files produced by weaving or tangling a web are not significant and should probably not be subject to source control: they should be "ignored", in git terminology. This means writing a special file called |.gitignore| which specifies the files to be ignored. The following does so for a web |W|: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -gitignore W/.gitignore = Once again, Inweb does this by working from a script, and the rules are almost exactly the same as for makefiles except that the file extension is |.giscript|, not |.mkscript|, and: (*) The special makefile macros are not available, though |set| and |repeat| are; (*) The special macro |{basics}| expands to the contents of the file |inweb/Materials/default.giscript|. This does the same thing as would be done if the web provided no script of its own; the idea is that you can then list some additional things to ignore. @h README files. Repositories at Github customarily have |README.mk| files, in Markdown syntax, explaining what they are. These of course should probably include current version numbers, and it's a pain keeping that up to date. For really complicated repositories, containing multiple webs, some automation is essential, and once again Inweb can oblige. = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -prototype W/W.rmscript -write-me W/README.mk = The same conventions and notations are used here as for makefiles and gitignores (see above), except that the comment character is no longer |#|, since a |#| at the start of a line means a heading in Markdown. Instead, a line is a comment if its first non-whitespace character is a forward-slash |/|. (*) The special makefile macros are not available, though |set| and |repeat| are; (*) The special macro |{bibliographic datum: ... of: ...}| expands to the value of the named bibliographic datum for the program named. |Version Number| is especially useful, and is available even for some Inform assets which are not webs and do not therefore have bibliographic data of their own -- interpreter templates and Inform 7 extensions, for example. @h Semantic version numbering and build metadata. When Inweb reads in a web, it also looks for a file called |build.txt| in the web's directory; if that isn't there, it looks for the same file in the current working directory; if that's not there either, never mind. Such a file contains up to three text fields, all optional: = (text) Prerelease: alpha.1 Build Date: 23 March 2020 Build Number: 6Q26 = The bibliographic variables |Prerelease| and so on are then set from this file. (They can equally well be set by the Contents section of the web, and if so then that takes priority.) The Prerelease and Build Number, if given, are used in combination with the Version Number (set in the Contents) to produce the semantic version number, or semver, for the web. For example, if the Contents included: = (text) Version Number: 6.2.12 = then the semver would be |6.2.12-alpha.1+6Q26|. This is accessible within the web as the variable |Semantic Version Number|. For more on semvers, see: https://semver.org @ A special advancing mechanism exists to update build numbers and dates. Running Inweb with |-advance-build W| checks the build date for web |W|: if it differs from today, then it is changed to today, and the build code is advanced by one. Running |-advance-build-file B| does this for a stand-alone build file |B|, without need of a web. @h Ctags. Each time a web is tangled, Inweb writes a |tags| file to the web's home directory, containing a list of //Universal ctags -> https://ctags.io// for any structures, functions or constant definitions found in the web. You need do nothing to make this happen, and can ignore the file if it's of no use. If you are editing a web in certain text editors, though, such as //BBEdit -> https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit// for MacOS, then this should make code completion and definition lookup features work. You can however write the file elsewhere: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -tangle -ctags-to secret_lair/my_nifty.ctags = or not at all: = (text as ConsoleText) $ inweb/Tangled/inweb W -tangle -no-ctags =