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The problem with having one monster make system is that code changes (adding a new dependency) affect build rules indirectly (the build of a test of a downstrea

The problem with having one monster make system is that code changes (adding a new dependency) affect build rules indirectly (the build of a test of a downstream library now needs to add a new include search path in a topologically correct way). Now, there are various DRY ways to model that sort of thing in make. But very quickly, the project is no longer an intuitive expression of allegedly simple make. It is a build framework written in make. Nobody denies that Make can model all this. CMake and autoconf actually embrace that quality of make. The concern is that turning "depend on libfoobar.a" or "libfizzbuzz.a now requires FIZZBUZZ_STRING=std::string" into a coherent Makefile change is more often nontrivial, especially without breaking parallelism, correctness, or the ability to do incremental builds.

ajross 7y ago
> the build of a test of a downstream library now needs to add a new include search path in a topologically correct way) Build of a what of a which does what now? Why on earth do I care about that? (No, don't explain it to me. I know the answer. I just don't care.) We're clearly talking past each other. You're still hung up over obscure minutiae that giant projects need to worry about, and you're convinced that if you just had a tool that handled all that minutiae and that if everyone used it that everything would be roses. I'm saying: 1. Your minutiae isn't my minutiae. Your favorite tool sucks for, probably, most people. Tools designed to contorted sentences like the one I quoted tend to only work for one thing. That's how you get ant and cargo and cmake, not a better generic build system. 2. Minutiae isn't the issue. All big projects end up stuck in minutiae details and it's always a mess. 3. Tools designed to address minutiae details tend to be outrageous garbage when faced with simple problems. 4. Most build problems are simple at their root, especially in the early days when you are still figuring out what the build really wants to be doing. 5. Make is, was, and remains a better tool for people faced with #4, which is why it won't die.
- tom_ 7y ago
  I expect you must use a different Make from the one I do? Points #2 and #3 much more accurately characterise my experience with Make than my experience with other tools. #2 may be universally true, but Make does seem to get you to the tipping point much sooner. I've found #5 only true if the solution to #4 consists entirely of one phony target, listing the commands to be run, one after another. There's nothing wrong with using Make like this, and it does have some advantages over a Bash script with set -v -x -e at the top, but this isn't a great advertisement for Make's usability. (In fact, regarding "if you just had a tool that handled all that minutiae and that if everyone used it that everything would be roses" - yes, I have found that everything is roses when you do this ;) Building stuff that uses Autotools or CMake, horrid as they are, is almost always pretty straightforward! Stuff that comes with a "simple" Makefile is rather likely to require at least some work. Even simple missing dependency/wrong compiler version issues result in much more cryptic error messages.)
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Knowing correct compile commands for your project isn't minutiae. It's basically the point of a build system. It's not as trivial to get them right as you seem to appreciate. You need topological sorting for that. And you need an accurate and detailed model of your build for that. You only need three or four moving parts in your project for that to become hard to maintain manually. Most development automation problems are not simple. Especially if you want to be portable and readable. It seems really easy when you start but then you need to do debug builds, incorporate sanitizers, generate a little protobuf, link against libclang, run a linter, respect pkg-config, support install ands, or any of a number of other things. These aren't especially academic or esoteric use cases. They're reasonable things to do in a C or C++ project.

ajross 7y ago

> the build of a test of a downstream library now needs to add a new include search path in a topologically correct way) Build of a what of a which does what now? Why on earth do I care about that? (No, don't explain it to me. I know the answer. I just don't care.) We're clearly talking past each other. You're still hung up over obscure minutiae that giant projects need to worry about, and you're convinced that if you just had a tool that handled all that minutiae and that if everyone used it that everything would be roses. I'm saying: 1. Your minutiae isn't my minutiae. Your favorite tool sucks for, probably, most people. Tools designed to contorted sentences like the one I quoted tend to only work for one thing. That's how you get ant and cargo and cmake, not a better generic build system. 2. Minutiae isn't the issue. All big projects end up stuck in minutiae details and it's always a mess. 3. Tools designed to address minutiae details tend to be outrageous garbage when faced with simple problems. 4. Most build problems are simple at their root, especially in the early days when you are still figuring out what the build really wants to be doing. 5. Make is, was, and remains a better tool for people faced with #4, which is why it won't die.

tom_ 7y ago
I expect you must use a different Make from the one I do? Points #2 and #3 much more accurately characterise my experience with Make than my experience with other tools. #2 may be universally true, but Make does seem to get you to the tipping point much sooner. I've found #5 only true if the solution to #4 consists entirely of one phony target, listing the commands to be run, one after another. There's nothing wrong with using Make like this, and it does have some advantages over a Bash script with set -v -x -e at the top, but this isn't a great advertisement for Make's usability. (In fact, regarding "if you just had a tool that handled all that minutiae and that if everyone used it that everything would be roses" - yes, I have found that everything is roses when you do this ;) Building stuff that uses Autotools or CMake, horrid as they are, is almost always pretty straightforward! Stuff that comes with a "simple" Makefile is rather likely to require at least some work. Even simple missing dependency/wrong compiler version issues result in much more cryptic error messages.)
humanrebar 7y ago
Knowing correct compile commands for your project isn't minutiae. It's basically the point of a build system. It's not as trivial to get them right as you seem to appreciate. You need topological sorting for that. And you need an accurate and detailed model of your build for that. You only need three or four moving parts in your project for that to become hard to maintain manually. Most development automation problems are not simple. Especially if you want to be portable and readable. It seems really easy when you start but then you need to do debug builds, incorporate sanitizers, generate a little protobuf, link against libclang, run a linter, respect pkg-config, support install ands, or any of a number of other things. These aren't especially academic or esoteric use cases. They're reasonable things to do in a C or C++ project.