3 ms·

If meson fits your project it's worth using it - it could turn into a straightjacket later but changing to something else isn't the end of the world if it cost

by t43562 3y ago

If meson fits your project it's worth using it - it could turn into a straightjacket later but changing to something else isn't the end of the world if it cost little effort to implement it in the first place. As for trying to use a "modern" language to write scripts.......well if they're not declarative and don't understand dependencies then how can they be better? make is no paragon - it just contains solutions to lots of problems that exist in build systems. The fact that those problems exist and make has ways to solve them isn't make's fault. Everyone might perhaps want builds to "just work" so they can ignore them and such people write scripts and use the concept of "rebuild and clean" a lot and it works until the build gets big and slow. "modern" tools get written with many simplifying assumptions and become slowly complicated as they hit all the problems make hit long ago and try to find ways to solve them.

gosub100 3y ago
> if they're not declarative and don't understand dependencies then how can they be better? They are both a wash: you're spinning your gears trying to get a simple task done. My claim is that you might as well do it in python instead of wade through the cesspool of hidden rules or try to debug why your makefile silently fails. It's the same amount of time spent, you might as well check the date stamp in python and rebuild the source if it's newer than the output. They both suck, might as well suck in a modern language than trial by fire with make.
- t43562 3y ago
  Oh, I think that's OFTEN true. When your build gets big though - when you're building multiple packages for example of which most are not yours - the benefits can start to become more worthwhile. I currently work with people who think a huge build.sh is the way to go - so the build does a lot of unnecessary things just to be sure they are uptodate and it's slow. It's still not bad enough to kick up a fuss but it's going that way.

by t43562 3y ago

gosub100 3y ago

> if they're not declarative and don't understand dependencies then how can they be better? They are both a wash: you're spinning your gears trying to get a simple task done. My claim is that you might as well do it in python instead of wade through the cesspool of hidden rules or try to debug why your makefile silently fails. It's the same amount of time spent, you might as well check the date stamp in python and rebuild the source if it's newer than the output. They both suck, might as well suck in a modern language than trial by fire with make.

t43562 3y ago
Oh, I think that's OFTEN true. When your build gets big though - when you're building multiple packages for example of which most are not yours - the benefits can start to become more worthwhile. I currently work with people who think a huge build.sh is the way to go - so the build does a lot of unnecessary things just to be sure they are uptodate and it's slow. It's still not bad enough to kick up a fuss but it's going that way.