6 ms·

I'm using Meson for a project using C++ with Gtkmm, Libmicrohttpd, catch2 and other libraries. My experience is good neglecting some minor issues. Meson is fast

I'm using Meson for a project using C++ with Gtkmm, Libmicrohttpd, catch2 and other libraries. My experience is good neglecting some minor issues. Meson is fast, well readable if written well, uses system libraries by default and allows flexible usage. On the other side I'm using Java with Maven and it is - a big burden. It's build in dependency retrieval system also isn't helping. Maybe I just don't like XML - because it is not human-readable ;)

hawski 5y ago
I'm sorry to pick a nit, but could you expand on "well readable if written well"? I would say that a Makefile or even a CMakeLists.txt are readable if written well.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  For my part, I find that being written well is necessary but not sufficient for readability in a Makefile. The other big one is that you need to have a strong familiarity with Make, and use it often. Familiar because there's no way a person who hasn't actually been through some form of Make documentation in detail can even guess at what things like $@, $?, and $^ do, or accurately decipher its macro replacement syntax, or any of that. And use it often because, even if you were deeply familiar with Make in the past, if you haven't touched it in a few years, you're unlikely to reliably remember it without help.
0x138d5 5y ago
Any particular reason you use Maven instead of Gradle?
- zaphirplane 5y ago
  Not op Each gradle task is artistically handcrafted written to capture the life experience and pain the author has experienced in their life :) it devolves into a custom shell script
vips7L 5y ago
I find pom.xml much more readable than deciphering a giant script file like build.gradle or CMakeLists.txt. 99% of the time I automatically know how the build works because its convention.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  For me, Gradle's readability depends heavily on how you use it. If you use it Maven-style, with relatively simple build scripts and all the complexity pushed out to plugins, it's very readable. A fair bit more readable than Maven, in my opinion, but I wouldn't care to argue that point in particular. If you use it the way Stack Overflow tells you to do it, so that your build scripts are basically glorified ad-hoc Groovy programs, then, yeah, it's just impossible. Unfortunately, since the only way to really understand any of Gradle is to understand all of Gradle, and understanding all of Gradle is a huge effort, it's kind of a catch-22. For most people, the only really sensible way to use it is to Google for advice and then do what Stack Overflow tells you to do. But that invariably leads to a result that is not even remotely sensible. Long story short, my hot take is this. Maven is write-only. Gradle (ideal usage) is read-only. Gradle (normal usage) can be neither read nor written.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    On top of that each Gradle release changes a couple of DSL stuff, and the Android plugin is an hopeless case.

hawski 5y ago

I'm sorry to pick a nit, but could you expand on "well readable if written well"? I would say that a Makefile or even a CMakeLists.txt are readable if written well.

mumblemumble 5y ago
For my part, I find that being written well is necessary but not sufficient for readability in a Makefile. The other big one is that you need to have a strong familiarity with Make, and use it often. Familiar because there's no way a person who hasn't actually been through some form of Make documentation in detail can even guess at what things like $@, $?, and $^ do, or accurately decipher its macro replacement syntax, or any of that. And use it often because, even if you were deeply familiar with Make in the past, if you haven't touched it in a few years, you're unlikely to reliably remember it without help.

0x138d5 5y ago

Any particular reason you use Maven instead of Gradle?

zaphirplane 5y ago
Not op Each gradle task is artistically handcrafted written to capture the life experience and pain the author has experienced in their life :) it devolves into a custom shell script

vips7L 5y ago

I find pom.xml much more readable than deciphering a giant script file like build.gradle or CMakeLists.txt. 99% of the time I automatically know how the build works because its convention.

mumblemumble 5y ago
For me, Gradle's readability depends heavily on how you use it. If you use it Maven-style, with relatively simple build scripts and all the complexity pushed out to plugins, it's very readable. A fair bit more readable than Maven, in my opinion, but I wouldn't care to argue that point in particular. If you use it the way Stack Overflow tells you to do it, so that your build scripts are basically glorified ad-hoc Groovy programs, then, yeah, it's just impossible. Unfortunately, since the only way to really understand any of Gradle is to understand all of Gradle, and understanding all of Gradle is a huge effort, it's kind of a catch-22. For most people, the only really sensible way to use it is to Google for advice and then do what Stack Overflow tells you to do. But that invariably leads to a result that is not even remotely sensible. Long story short, my hot take is this. Maven is write-only. Gradle (ideal usage) is read-only. Gradle (normal usage) can be neither read nor written.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  On top of that each Gradle release changes a couple of DSL stuff, and the Android plugin is an hopeless case.