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This kind of thing is the reason that header files should die and a new module system should emerge in the world of C/C++. "Header-only" should stop being a nov

by sedatk 7y ago

This kind of thing is the reason that header files should die and a new module system should emerge in the world of C/C++. "Header-only" should stop being a novelty. Distributing or consuming libraries should be much more straightforward and easy as with modern languages. I'm not sure C++20 modules are the solution, but this certainly isn't.

jonny383 7y ago
This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? Header files work. They've worked for many decades. Yes, they require software authors to _do more work_, but they also help to eliminate a lib/ directory with 10,000 interdependent libraries that quickly becomes untrusted and frankly, ridiculous.
- rat9988 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you are criticizing really. npm is by far better than what we have in the C world, and why npm in particular? Because it's easy to bash?
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Far better? Lol nope. In the C world the OS distributions and the general nastiness of shipping libraries outside of an OS distro at least turn away the newbies who think that the world needs yet another module that pads a string to X length. The hardness of C is its weakness but also its strength. C programmers at least tend to know basic programming and OS management skills while JS programmers... oh hell I'm happy I got out of the mess that is "modern" frontend development.
    - jiofih 7y ago
      You still haven’t said a single word about package management.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        oh I do have: the easier it is to publish code/packages, the more newbies and morons will flood your environment, to the point of unusability (or at least inability to do any sort of audit).
  - jonny383 7y ago
    npm as a package manager is good in theory. But in practice, it does tend to create a culture of "just use a package" for everything. For example foreach [0]. [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach
    - rat9988 7y ago
      While I do easily agree that npm has created some sort of unwanted culture, I still think this culture was born partly because it's easy to publish/import. I can't say the same of the C world, moreover, there isn't only npm in the package management world.
- bfrog 7y ago
  The npm of the C world is the dozen different package management systems that people have crafted and spent countless hours on. They work, but the lack of a standard makes it a bit cumbersome. Building a .deb is like trying to run a american ninja course, lots and lots of esoteric obstacles. Sure you can hack a .deb, but there's about 2 dozen tools to actually make one that works like the real deal instead of your ad-hoc tarball.
- sedatk 7y ago
  npm is an outlier. Package management ecosystems of Python, C#, Go and Rust don’t suffer from such cultural problems or dependency hells. Arguably, you can attest some of those issues to JavaScript’s immense popularity but if even Python can manage it, others can too.
- clarry 7y ago
  > This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? I don't care for the deep dependency chains of npm, but integrating C libraries which use a mix of different build systems, and making sure your complete project cross-compiles cleanly with different toolchains for different arches is just irritating and time consuming. I don't think the situation is ideal.
human_banana 7y ago
A good packaging system for C/C++ would go a long way. CPAN, php pear, pip, go get, etc, etc. all have at least decent package management, support for third part repos, and ways to add a package without using the manager for things you've manually downloaded / coded yourself. Trying to get multiple C packages from third parties all working together is rough compared to other languages. Rust has me a little spoiled, I guess.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  What’s wrong with apt?
  - disconnected 7y ago
    What's wrong with apt is that you can't get what YOU want: you can only get whatever the Debian people decided makes sense for one specific version of the OS - which usually means a 2 years out of date version of the library. If you need a library of a version other than the Debian approved version, you are back to manually downloading source tarballs from sourceforge and figuring out their arcane build system. Also, apt doesn't let you have two versions of the same library installed. For SOME things, they have more than one version package, but in general, you can't have STABLE_VERSION installed for your day-to-day OS usage and DEVELOPMENT_VERSION installed for your development needs. You only get one or the other (this isn't exclusive of apt - all Linux package managers do this, AFAIK). Anyway, contrast that situation with pip (python), where you can just grab whatever version you want, have the package manager solve the dependencies for you, and slap it all into a virtualenv where it won't interfere with your system-level libraries. Heck, you can even grab versions straight from git, and it will (try to) solve the dependencies (if any). It's a WHOLE different level of convenience.
    - wwright 7y ago
      Many package managers support an “install root,” and there’s always Docker containers. Those obviously don’t solve many of the other issues that a real Package manager would, of course.
    - 7y ago
BubRoss 7y ago
What do you mean by 'this kind of thing'? You didn't actually state any arguments against single header libraries.
- sedatk 7y ago
  Its existence is my argument. The only reason single-header libraries exist is that library management in C/C++ is terribly cumbersome. We shouldn't need them at all. There is a reason source only distributions are practically absent in almost all modern languages.

by sedatk 7y ago

jonny383 7y ago

This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? Header files work. They've worked for many decades. Yes, they require software authors to _do more work_, but they also help to eliminate a lib/ directory with 10,000 interdependent libraries that quickly becomes untrusted and frankly, ridiculous.

rat9988 7y ago
I'm not sure what you are criticizing really. npm is by far better than what we have in the C world, and why npm in particular? Because it's easy to bash?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Far better? Lol nope. In the C world the OS distributions and the general nastiness of shipping libraries outside of an OS distro at least turn away the newbies who think that the world needs yet another module that pads a string to X length. The hardness of C is its weakness but also its strength. C programmers at least tend to know basic programming and OS management skills while JS programmers... oh hell I'm happy I got out of the mess that is "modern" frontend development.
  - jiofih 7y ago
    You still haven’t said a single word about package management.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      oh I do have: the easier it is to publish code/packages, the more newbies and morons will flood your environment, to the point of unusability (or at least inability to do any sort of audit).
- jonny383 7y ago
  npm as a package manager is good in theory. But in practice, it does tend to create a culture of "just use a package" for everything. For example foreach [0]. [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach
  - rat9988 7y ago
    While I do easily agree that npm has created some sort of unwanted culture, I still think this culture was born partly because it's easy to publish/import. I can't say the same of the C world, moreover, there isn't only npm in the package management world.
bfrog 7y ago
The npm of the C world is the dozen different package management systems that people have crafted and spent countless hours on. They work, but the lack of a standard makes it a bit cumbersome. Building a .deb is like trying to run a american ninja course, lots and lots of esoteric obstacles. Sure you can hack a .deb, but there's about 2 dozen tools to actually make one that works like the real deal instead of your ad-hoc tarball.
sedatk 7y ago
npm is an outlier. Package management ecosystems of Python, C#, Go and Rust don’t suffer from such cultural problems or dependency hells. Arguably, you can attest some of those issues to JavaScript’s immense popularity but if even Python can manage it, others can too.
clarry 7y ago
> This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? I don't care for the deep dependency chains of npm, but integrating C libraries which use a mix of different build systems, and making sure your complete project cross-compiles cleanly with different toolchains for different arches is just irritating and time consuming. I don't think the situation is ideal.

human_banana 7y ago

A good packaging system for C/C++ would go a long way. CPAN, php pear, pip, go get, etc, etc. all have at least decent package management, support for third part repos, and ways to add a package without using the manager for things you've manually downloaded / coded yourself. Trying to get multiple C packages from third parties all working together is rough compared to other languages. Rust has me a little spoiled, I guess.

umanwizard 7y ago
What’s wrong with apt?
- disconnected 7y ago
  What's wrong with apt is that you can't get what YOU want: you can only get whatever the Debian people decided makes sense for one specific version of the OS - which usually means a 2 years out of date version of the library. If you need a library of a version other than the Debian approved version, you are back to manually downloading source tarballs from sourceforge and figuring out their arcane build system. Also, apt doesn't let you have two versions of the same library installed. For SOME things, they have more than one version package, but in general, you can't have STABLE_VERSION installed for your day-to-day OS usage and DEVELOPMENT_VERSION installed for your development needs. You only get one or the other (this isn't exclusive of apt - all Linux package managers do this, AFAIK). Anyway, contrast that situation with pip (python), where you can just grab whatever version you want, have the package manager solve the dependencies for you, and slap it all into a virtualenv where it won't interfere with your system-level libraries. Heck, you can even grab versions straight from git, and it will (try to) solve the dependencies (if any). It's a WHOLE different level of convenience.
  - wwright 7y ago
    Many package managers support an “install root,” and there’s always Docker containers. Those obviously don’t solve many of the other issues that a real Package manager would, of course.
  - 7y ago

BubRoss 7y ago

What do you mean by 'this kind of thing'? You didn't actually state any arguments against single header libraries.

sedatk 7y ago
Its existence is my argument. The only reason single-header libraries exist is that library management in C/C++ is terribly cumbersome. We shouldn't need them at all. There is a reason source only distributions are practically absent in almost all modern languages.