3 ms·

I'm not a cmake guy, but seeing this: > If the `if() else() endif()` syntax is too hard to understand, good luck with modern software engineering, because you'

I'm not a cmake guy, but seeing this: > If the `if() else() endif()` syntax is too hard to understand, good luck with modern software engineering, because you'll have to deal with many languages. Coupled with: > "Weird function definitions" -> most of the time, functions are a coding smell to me. I always managed to not use them (or maybe I used one or two? I don't remember) and that's all fine. Projects that define a ton of functions get unreadable extremely quickly. is weird. If you can't handle a lot of functions, you'll struggle with many languages. If a lot of functions is a code smell, then the problem is with the language.

palata 4y ago
> If a lot of functions is a code smell, then the problem is with the language. Let me kindly disagree :). You do not use a build system to write a complex program, you use it to call a compiler. You could run your compiler manually, but it doesn't scale. You could write a shell/python/lua/etc script that scales better, but nobody else will know it (and chances are that nobody will want to learn about it). By using a build system (autotools, cmake, meson, gradle, ...), you agree to use a standardized API to call your compiler. It doesn't really matter what API it is; what matters is that it is standardized: once you know it, you can build all the projects that use it. Now it is true that CMake projects are often a mess. Either because it's used incorrectly, or because it's doing a lot of magic with custom functions (and therefore it looks more like a custom shell script than a CMake project). Do I mean that CMake is perfect? Certainly not. But it doesn't suck either. And I see a whole lot of criticism coming from people who write messy CMakeLists. For a criticism to be constructive, it has to be informed.

3 ms·

I'm not a cmake guy, but seeing this: > If the `if() else() endif()` syntax is too hard to understand, good luck with modern software engineering, because you'

by BeetleB 4y ago

palata 4y ago
> If a lot of functions is a code smell, then the problem is with the language. Let me kindly disagree :). You do not use a build system to write a complex program, you use it to call a compiler. You could run your compiler manually, but it doesn't scale. You could write a shell/python/lua/etc script that scales better, but nobody else will know it (and chances are that nobody will want to learn about it). By using a build system (autotools, cmake, meson, gradle, ...), you agree to use a standardized API to call your compiler. It doesn't really matter what API it is; what matters is that it is standardized: once you know it, you can build all the projects that use it. Now it is true that CMake projects are often a mess. Either because it's used incorrectly, or because it's doing a lot of magic with custom functions (and therefore it looks more like a custom shell script than a CMake project). Do I mean that CMake is perfect? Certainly not. But it doesn't suck either. And I see a whole lot of criticism coming from people who write messy CMakeLists. For a criticism to be constructive, it has to be informed.