5 ms·

In practice this comes off as a rather motte and bailey argument. "There's plenty of ways to make building C as easy as Cargo." OK, show me. "Well, you use this

by jerf 3y ago

In practice this comes off as a rather motte and bailey argument. "There's plenty of ways to make building C as easy as Cargo." OK, show me. "Well, you use this and do this and this." OK, that didn't work because of $THIS_REASON. "Oh that's easy to fix you just do this thing." {Repeat several times.} OK, I guess it's working now, but there's no way that was as easy as cargo. "What are you talking about, it was a series of easy steps that only involved reading dozens of pages of docs, a couple of not-quite-current-but-close-to-accurate Stack Overflow posts, upgrading to the correct version of the build tool, and directly posting on a couple of mailing lists!" To be honest, the moment I have to evaluate a dozen tools, pick one, and use it, even if that tool does manage to be "$TOOL build" and literally nothing else which I don't think is anywhere near something people can count on in the C world, it has already proved to be harder than "cargo build".

norir 3y ago
There is a price to easy. In my experience, cargo build times tend to be soulkillingly long. But I don't like waiting more than a few hundred ms for incremental builds. So for me, cargo build is actually harder than make to attain an enjoyable build system. Make is annoying but Makefile issues are found quickly and easily when running `find . | entr -c make` and saving the source file often.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Build times have nothing to do with cargo but with the language itself. They're not the "price to easy", it's the price of the static compiler checks.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    that's only true if you believe dependency resolution is free.
    - alpaca128 3y ago
      I have never witnessed cargo being delayed from that by a noteworthy amount of time. I just tried it, on my PC it takes cargo 0.3 seconds to start compiling the first of 309 dependencies in a clean Bevy repo. The entire compilation takes 31 seconds, and that's the best case with lots of multithreading and all packages already downloaded. That's close enough to "free" for me.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        doesn't really matter. You said "nothing to do with" and I said "is not free". 1/3 of a second for a build that has already cached all dependencies means I was correct that it's not free and you were being dismissive when you said it had nothing to do with build times. If you want to argue that it's a minimal amount of time then argue that instead of what you've been arguing.
        alpaca128 3y ago
        I was of course talking about usage in the real world, which is the thing that matters in the end. Harping on the precise meaning of words like that is pointless.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        the real world, where nothing means something.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      Cargo does not do dependency resolution on every build.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        how does a dependency management system ensure the dependencies are there without doing dependency resolution?
  - keybored 3y ago
    Isn’t it the price of the LLVM backend? That would make it a rustc implementation price.
nanolith 3y ago
First, I did not say anywhere in my reply, "as easy as Cargo". I said "similar to Cargo." Huge difference. C has been around for over 50 years. It predates many of the modern "everything including the kitchen sink" style of language platforms. It has spread across so many platforms and uses that a Cargo like integration is not going to happen. But, this does not mean that build, package, and install tools don't exist. If you want me to provide you with a single tool to rule them all, well, that's impossible for the reasons I listed above. But, depending on which platforms you care about and which features you want, there are plenty of existing tools. If your goalpost is "change C to be like Rust and have a single build tool", then that's impossible. If your goalpost is "find me a tool that does X, Y, and Z", then there that is certainly possible. There are Cargo clones for C/C++ that work just fine.
- jerf 3y ago
  While less aggressively "motte & bailey" then the sibling reply from PH95VuimJjqBqy, you basically proved my point rather than disproving it. You can't name a single tool that is as easy as cargo. I know that's because if you do there will be a dozen replies from users of that tool going "Oh, my, no it was quite difficult to set up, ultimately didn't work for us, and we had to abandon it for this other tool." I do not understand the mindset that believes that if you explain why a problem is hard, it is somehow no longer hard, or somehow it no longer "counts". Yes. C is a sprawling multi-decade monster that never started out with a good build tool because it was just too early in history for that to be the sort of concern it is now. I certainly wouldn't dream of claiming there aren't reasons C is complicated to build, even ones that are generally good when you consider the entire history of the project. The world would not be better off if we had somehow waited for C to be perfect before using it, because it is precisely the act of using C that has taught us the ways to improve other languages. I credit the platform for that, I do not deduct points. However, none of that changes the fact that it is a bear to build anything non-trivial in C, and the simple act of reading a list of your tool options is literally already harder than "cargo build". I basically don't believe by assertion that there are tools that can solve this with just a relatively dainty (by C standards) little declarative file and a single command execution. I'm sure they have a "happy path" that looks like that but as soon as I leave it it'll explode in complexity, and I'm basically guaranteed to leave it at some point for any non-trivial project.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
> To be honest, the moment I have to evaluate a dozen tools, pick one, and use it, even if that tool does manage to be "$TOOL build" and literally nothing else which I don't think is anywhere near something people can count on in the C world, it has already proved to be harder than "cargo build". C will build and run in places rust can't. so I should argue C is better because in my chosen metric (diversity of platforms) it wins.
- jerf 3y ago
  Thank you for that demonstration of the motte & bailey argument.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    thank you for being a dismissive jackass.

by jerf 3y ago

norir 3y ago

There is a price to easy. In my experience, cargo build times tend to be soulkillingly long. But I don't like waiting more than a few hundred ms for incremental builds. So for me, cargo build is actually harder than make to attain an enjoyable build system. Make is annoying but Makefile issues are found quickly and easily when running `find . | entr -c make` and saving the source file often.

alpaca128 3y ago
Build times have nothing to do with cargo but with the language itself. They're not the "price to easy", it's the price of the static compiler checks.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  that's only true if you believe dependency resolution is free.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    I have never witnessed cargo being delayed from that by a noteworthy amount of time. I just tried it, on my PC it takes cargo 0.3 seconds to start compiling the first of 309 dependencies in a clean Bevy repo. The entire compilation takes 31 seconds, and that's the best case with lots of multithreading and all packages already downloaded. That's close enough to "free" for me.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      doesn't really matter. You said "nothing to do with" and I said "is not free". 1/3 of a second for a build that has already cached all dependencies means I was correct that it's not free and you were being dismissive when you said it had nothing to do with build times. If you want to argue that it's a minimal amount of time then argue that instead of what you've been arguing.
      - alpaca128 3y ago
        I was of course talking about usage in the real world, which is the thing that matters in the end. Harping on the precise meaning of words like that is pointless.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        the real world, where nothing means something.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Cargo does not do dependency resolution on every build.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      how does a dependency management system ensure the dependencies are there without doing dependency resolution?
- keybored 3y ago
  Isn’t it the price of the LLVM backend? That would make it a rustc implementation price.

nanolith 3y ago

First, I did not say anywhere in my reply, "as easy as Cargo". I said "similar to Cargo." Huge difference. C has been around for over 50 years. It predates many of the modern "everything including the kitchen sink" style of language platforms. It has spread across so many platforms and uses that a Cargo like integration is not going to happen. But, this does not mean that build, package, and install tools don't exist. If you want me to provide you with a single tool to rule them all, well, that's impossible for the reasons I listed above. But, depending on which platforms you care about and which features you want, there are plenty of existing tools. If your goalpost is "change C to be like Rust and have a single build tool", then that's impossible. If your goalpost is "find me a tool that does X, Y, and Z", then there that is certainly possible. There are Cargo clones for C/C++ that work just fine.

jerf 3y ago
While less aggressively "motte & bailey" then the sibling reply from PH95VuimJjqBqy, you basically proved my point rather than disproving it. You can't name a single tool that is as easy as cargo. I know that's because if you do there will be a dozen replies from users of that tool going "Oh, my, no it was quite difficult to set up, ultimately didn't work for us, and we had to abandon it for this other tool." I do not understand the mindset that believes that if you explain why a problem is hard, it is somehow no longer hard, or somehow it no longer "counts". Yes. C is a sprawling multi-decade monster that never started out with a good build tool because it was just too early in history for that to be the sort of concern it is now. I certainly wouldn't dream of claiming there aren't reasons C is complicated to build, even ones that are generally good when you consider the entire history of the project. The world would not be better off if we had somehow waited for C to be perfect before using it, because it is precisely the act of using C that has taught us the ways to improve other languages. I credit the platform for that, I do not deduct points. However, none of that changes the fact that it is a bear to build anything non-trivial in C, and the simple act of reading a list of your tool options is literally already harder than "cargo build". I basically don't believe by assertion that there are tools that can solve this with just a relatively dainty (by C standards) little declarative file and a single command execution. I'm sure they have a "happy path" that looks like that but as soon as I leave it it'll explode in complexity, and I'm basically guaranteed to leave it at some point for any non-trivial project.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

> To be honest, the moment I have to evaluate a dozen tools, pick one, and use it, even if that tool does manage to be "$TOOL build" and literally nothing else which I don't think is anywhere near something people can count on in the C world, it has already proved to be harder than "cargo build". C will build and run in places rust can't. so I should argue C is better because in my chosen metric (diversity of platforms) it wins.

jerf 3y ago
Thank you for that demonstration of the motte & bailey argument.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  thank you for being a dismissive jackass.