Re: build system alternatives (Was: Using vala in GNOME)

[Pavel Rojtberg <lists madman2k net>]

Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 23:45 +0300, natan yellin wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:59 PM, Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen
> > <mikkel kamstrup gmail com>  wrote:
> >          2008/6/30 Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro<gjc inescporto pt>:
> >
> >          >  On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 12:01 -0300, Johan Dahlin wrote:
> >          >>  Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> >          >>  >  On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 15:07 +0100, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> >          >>  [..]
> >          >>
> >          >>  >>  Plus, CMake is getting more mature and stable and it
> >          already supports
> >          >>  >>  VisualStudio and XCode project files conversion, lack of
> >          proper
> >          >>  >>  extensibility being its only downside at the moment.
> >          >>  >
> >          >>  >  Lack of extensibility, and use of another arcane custom
> >          made programming
> >          >>  >  language (if we can call it that) for everything.
> >          >>  >
> >          >>  >  No, CMake is not an answer.  It is not significantly
> >          better than
> >          >>  >  autotools to justify a switch to it IMHO.
> >          >>
> >          >>  CMake *is* considerably better. Xcode/VisualStudio are
> >          killer features which
> >          >>  alone would make a switch worth it.
> >          >
> >          >  I disagree that Xcode/VisualStudio are killer features.  A
> >          powerful
> >          >  programming language and extensibility are way better
> >          features IMHO.
> >          >  Does a significant percentage of GNOME developers use any of
> >          these IDEs?
> >          >  Without such data you can't assert that those are killer
> >          features.
> >          >
> >          >  For the case of Vala, I don't see how CMake handles it any
> >          better than
> >          >  autotools.
> >          >
> >          >>
> >          >>  Can we please start to organize ourselves and try to move
> >          forward with
> >          >>  switching to another build system?
> >          >
> >          >  We can't switch to any single build system any more than we
> >          can switch
> >          >  to a single DVCS.  Or to a single programming language, for
> >          that matter!
> >          >  Different developers value different features.  Modern
> >          developers have
> >          >  to adapt to different environments.  I, for example,
> >          regularly program
> >          >  in C, C++, and Python.  I know how to use cvs, subversion,
> >          bazaar, git
> >          >  (poorly), and mercurial.  In particular I use subversion,
> >          bazaar, and
> >          >  mercurial very regularly, all at the same time, git not so
> >          much only
> >          >  because I didn't need to.  I can hack plain makefiles,
> >          >  autoconf/automake, waf, and scons.
> >
> >
> >          And is this an acceptable barrier of entry to Gnome
> >          development?
> > Agreed. While the skills that you mentioned do come with time no
> > matter what, you want to avoid forcing beginner developers to chew
> > more than they can swallow.
>
> That is a moot point.  A beginner chooses *one* project to hack on,
> that's all.  All he has to know is the programming language and tools of
> that single project.
>
> That is an issue when a developer wants to transition to another module,
> at which point he is probably no longer a beginner.
>
> This is basically the same thing as with programming languages.  Do you
> think everything should be coded in C in order to lower the required
> skill set of beginner hackers?  What about Python, C++, Vala, C#, Perl?
> We ban modules written in those other languages because they force
> developers to learn a new programming language?
>
> Besides, making life easier beginner contributors, fine, I'm all for it.
> But that has to be balanced with keeping the mental sanity of the
> contributors we already have.

I dont think the point is that moot. Being one of the "beginner 
developers" you refer to, I can say that autotools are really daunting.
As is that most of Gnome Modules are written in C.

Up to now I tried write some patches, but always capitulated because of 
some autotools and/ or C weirdness.

And honestly I dont see why I have to learn that freaking tools, when 
there is Scons/ Python which are beginner friendly and which I 
personally use for my own projects.

So my contributions this far were limited to the parts of gnome written 
in python.