Much of what makes 'C' annoying can be made less painful by referring to static/const struct tables/arrays. Those are a prime candidate for generation. You don

Much of what makes 'C' annoying can be made less painful by referring to static/const struct tables/arrays. Those are a prime candidate for generation. You don't have to keep the preprocessing of files as part of the mainline build, but there's something to be said for it - sort of "make GENERATE_ALL_THE_THINGS" might run the preprocessing { Python/Tcl/Perl/bash/even 'C' } scripts for you. If the generators just emit .h files, that can be pretty good. You're still left with something #ifdef-ey to select them, based on #defines or -D options. You might even go so far as to dynamically load these tables if that can make sense. The ld linker can directly link in blobs.