I have finally sorted out the details of the flags stuff, which I will
present below.  Any comments are highly appreciated.  Be warned: I am going
to implements this if there are no objections. ;-)

- Targets "shared" and "static" are provided, to build a shared or static
parrot library.

- The following macros will be provided in the Makefile
CFLAGS_COMMON       common compiler flags
LDFLAGS_COMMON      common linker flags
xxx_STATIC_BUILD    cflags and ldflags to build static parrot
xxx_STATIC_USE      cflags and ldflags to use static parrot
PARROT_STATIC_NAME  full, platform dependent name of static parrot lib
xxx_DYNAMIC_BUILD   cflags and ldflags to build shared parrot
xxx_DYNAMIC_USE     cflags and ldflags to use shared parrot
PARROT_DYNAMIC_NAME full, platform dependent name of dynamic parrot lib

LDFLAGS_DYNAMIC_USE should contain "-lparrot" or "parrot.lib", or whatever
necessary, so no need to use PARROT_xxx_NAME to specify linkage

The name of the parrot library should blend into the current system (and
might even be different for debug builds, eg libparrot_g.so (is that
correct?) or parrotd.lib).

- When building / using a shared parrot the compiler macro
PARROT_LIB_DYNAMIC will be defined, for static PARROT_LIB_STATIC

- When building parrot the compiler macro PARROT_LIB_EXPORTS will be
defined, when using parrot PARROT_LIB_IMPORTS

- Symbols that should be exported are declared as
PARROT_API some_function
The include files will be grepped for them, and stored in a file xxx_api
(even on platforms that don't need it).  It will look something like this:
----
# Do not edit this file!
# It is generated automatically by xxx

Parrot_new
Parrot_init
----
This file may be processed and used for linker input, to export only the
symbols mentioned.  But this is platform dependent.

The definition of PARROT_API is also platform dependent (I've already
presented it for win32-generic-cl), and should go into api.h.

- The platform names are normalized to
<OS>-<architecture>-<compiler>.  Hmm, should the architecture go first?
(cf PLATFORMS)
Examples are:
linux-ppc-gcc3.2.3
cygwin-x86-gcc3.3.3
win32-x86-cl13.10.3077

Platform specifics will be stored in
config/gen/platform/
  generic/generic/generic  any OS, any architecture, any compiler
  win32/x86/generic        win32, x86, any compiler
  win32/generic/cl         win32, any, MS compiler
  win32/x86/cl             win32, x86, MS compiler
  linux/ppc/gcc            linux, PPC, GCC
  ...
Possible would even be a future extension like:
  win32/x86/cl13.10        win32, x86, MS compiler version > 13.10

Ron