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

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 12:19 -0400, David Malcolm wrote:
[...]

> Rereading, this has turned into a rant, but posting in the hope that it
> will be useful:
> It often puts me off, as an experienced C developer.  When I first
> started looking at GNOME (and indeed Linux) I was an experienced C
> developer, having worked on various commercial videogames, finding ways
> to save a few hundred bytes here and there to get stuff to fit in RAM on
> the target platform... and I still have trouble with the GNU autotools:
> I want to spend my brainpower thinking about the problem domain of the
> program, my users, and my code, not having to deal with a pile of hacks
> upon hacks for trying to workaround obsolete platforms with a broken
> linker (or whatever).
> 
> The vast majority of the input to this tool is mere configuration data,
> but we're stuck with a model where it gets run through scripts on top of
> scripts that generate a program that's run as the developer (how many of
> you audit the generated scripts for malicious content?)

I added WAF support to gnome-python and gnome-python-desktop.  Doing my
best to improve the situation on my end :)

> 
> Also, I feel that a supposed cross-platform compatibility solution that
> fails to integrate with Visual Studio on Windows, and with XCode on OS X
> is broken by definition (not that I use either of these platforms).

OS X uses GCC for all compilation.  Wanting the build tool to interact
with the OS X IDE is too much to ask for IMHO.  And you can run
mingw/GCC on win32 too.  And Visual Studio has command line tools for
compilation, it's not just an IDE.  Again, asking for the tool to also
generate Visual Studio project files is too much to ask.  Command line
is enough.  Nothing stops you from editing the source files with your
favorite IDE, even if the build tool works from the command line.  If a
developer cannot use the command line, how is he expected to install a
GNOME module, to test it?  And lets not forget other IDEs.  What about
Eclipse, shouldn't we add IDE support for it also?  Where does it stop?

Also, I find it funny that people that do not actually use either XCode
or Visual Studio claim that supporting them is crucial.  Again, I don't
trust that judgement without proof (statistics).  Now, I do know a few
developers that use Visual Studio and can't live without it.  But among
GNOME developers I have serious doubts anyone uses one of those IDEs.

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
"The universe is always one step beyond logic" -- Frank Herbert