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> I find it to be an extremely sad state of affairs when it requires scouring the internet for a blog post from a Darwin engineer to build an outdated XNU :( L
by pcwalton 8y ago
> I find it to be an extremely sad state of affairs when it requires scouring the internet for a blog post from a Darwin engineer to build an outdated XNU :(
Large projects at companies tend to be hard to build, simply because it takes a lot of effort to make the build system for something so complex easy. If community contributions aren't particularly valued (which they aren't for XNU), then it's hard to internally justify spending the effort. Linux hackers are spoiled…
XNU isn't even one of the worst offenders. Try compiling Google's Skia, for example…
- lunixbochs 8y agoReally? I found Skia easier to compile than actually use.
- slimsag 8y agoI also found this to be true when I tried to use Skia.
- pcwalton 8y agoIt's probably gotten better lately. A few years ago it took me several days to get it built.
- pjmlp 8y agoSo it is not only me. On my case I ended up giving up and went back to Qt.
- pjmlp 8y agoOne needs to duplicate Google's build infrastructure, which is quite a pain versus other open source projects that rely on more mainstream tooling.
- hoaw 8y agoWhich would be fine if they provided some straight forward way to replicate that (like a container). It really seems like open source doesn't have that high of a standing at Google (anymore?). I guess limiting hardware manufacturers use of open source, not spending time making sure other people can build open source code, is what gives you the promotion these days
- sigjuice 8y agoI don’t see why compiling XNU needs to be more complicated than 1. install the compiler (easy to do just by typing ‘cc’ on a pristine Mac) 2. Type ‘make’
- pcwalton 8y agoIt doesn't need to be that more complicated, but build systems inevitably have a way of needing at least one full time engineer to get them to the point of being that nice to use.
- setquk 8y agoThat’s not how software teams work unfortunately. There’s probably three build systems and none of them work on certain days of the week and the guy who wrote it all left six months ago.