3 ms·

Ok, humor me for a second: What's wrong with that?

kgwgk 6y ago
It's not "wrong". It's a choice. You can provide some code and let the users do whatever is needed to get it to compile on their system. Or you can try to automate the process with the best of intentions and create a monster. In any case, the reason why autotools exists in the first place is that people were less than thrilled with the work required to make things work by hand.
- twic 6y ago
  Users should ask for something, and the build should build that, or fail if it can't. Randomly linking against things if they happen to be available is a terrible idea. Does any build ecosystem except C do this? I'm not sure even CMake does this.
  - greatgoat420 6y ago
    Who is the user? Most "users" never build 99% of what they use from source. Sure a few things that they do build they would like control over. But randomly linking against things is the default because it make the package maintainer's job easier, and it is hard enough as it is to get people to maintain and update packages for distributions.
jerf 6y ago
I'd paste the output of ffmpeg's ./configure --help here to illustrate the point, but it would be a rather hostile HN post due to its sheer size. It's not really practical to expect someone to configure dozens or even hundreds of optional libraries in a configuration file. It would be a major hassle to have to get a config file correct rather than config detecting as much as possible. ffmpeg is an extreme case, but it's proportionally not that uncommon; many of the things people most want to compile by hand are naturally the things with a ton of optional libraries. The easy cases with 0 or a handful of options are handled by your package manager and you don't care, because there aren't any "options" for you to disagree with.
rualca 6y ago
> Ok, humor me for a second: What's wrong with that? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and in fact it's so simple that afterwards we can even write a script to automate setting those variables. Who needs convoluted build systems anyway?
- greatgoat420 6y ago
  My sarcasm detector is on the fritz, what you are talking about is autotools, correct?

It's not "wrong". It's a choice. You can provide some code and let the users do whatever is needed to get it to compile on their system. Or you can try to automate the process with the best of intentions and create a monster. In any case, the reason why autotools exists in the first place is that people were less than thrilled with the work required to make things work by hand.

twic 6y ago
Users should ask for something, and the build should build that, or fail if it can't. Randomly linking against things if they happen to be available is a terrible idea. Does any build ecosystem except C do this? I'm not sure even CMake does this.
- greatgoat420 6y ago
  Who is the user? Most "users" never build 99% of what they use from source. Sure a few things that they do build they would like control over. But randomly linking against things is the default because it make the package maintainer's job easier, and it is hard enough as it is to get people to maintain and update packages for distributions.

jerf 6y ago

I'd paste the output of ffmpeg's ./configure --help here to illustrate the point, but it would be a rather hostile HN post due to its sheer size. It's not really practical to expect someone to configure dozens or even hundreds of optional libraries in a configuration file. It would be a major hassle to have to get a config file correct rather than config detecting as much as possible. ffmpeg is an extreme case, but it's proportionally not that uncommon; many of the things people most want to compile by hand are naturally the things with a ton of optional libraries. The easy cases with 0 or a handful of options are handled by your package manager and you don't care, because there aren't any "options" for you to disagree with.

rualca 6y ago

> Ok, humor me for a second: What's wrong with that? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and in fact it's so simple that afterwards we can even write a script to automate setting those variables. Who needs convoluted build systems anyway?

greatgoat420 6y ago
My sarcasm detector is on the fritz, what you are talking about is autotools, correct?