Re: [dev] lightweight build system

From: Anselm R Garbe <garbeam_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2017 10:29:19 +0200

On 26 July 2017 at 03:28, ochern <dexahex_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> That's right. No new build system is suggested.
>
> Let me suggest a small poll:
> 1 What build systems do you consider as most suckless?

Plain mkfiles + rc or plain Makefile's + sh and sbase-compliant command usage.

> 2 Generating Makefile from a shell script: it sucks, it's acceptable
> or it's rather suckless?

It sucks. There is no need to generate Makefiles. I prefer the
suckless approach of config.mk's for adjusting include/lib lookups on
excotic platforms, whilst using defaults that work on almost every
platform. I'm also a strong opponent of using pkg-config crap. I hate
it and I prefer to delete it whenever I see it.

Also in terms of code, it appears to be incompetency among several
developers that require platform specific defines on Linux/BSDs --
they are barely necessary. Windows etc. is out of scope for this
community.

Generating Makefiles obscures the simple cognitive task of adjusting a
correct path by some weird shell script logic that one needs to
understand as well. It is the whole argument against GNU autohell,
that generating build files is insane. You need to learn and
understand 2-3 languages (shell, m4, weird GNU make, log output) to
track down issues with it, whereas you only need to learn and
understand make in a decent world.

The same argument also applies to the discussion config.h vs config
file parser. Why should I learn a config file language, if I can
achieve the same with the programming language? I get the parser of C
already in the compiler and does not need to reinvent a language
parser for "options".

Also options suck. They are a sign of indecisiveness or weakness in
finding proper defaults or making firm UI decisions.
I want tools that work out of the box without bothering about
"configuration". We can waste a lot of time with "configuring" to
death.

All this is rather obvious to me.

BR,
Anselm
Received on Wed Jul 26 2017 - 10:29:19 CEST