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I have a fantasy where I win the lottery or inherit millions from a long lost relative and can live out my days developing whatever project I want. That project
by jahnu 3y ago
I have a fantasy where I win the lottery or inherit millions from a long lost relative and can live out my days developing whatever project I want. That project would be the ultimate build system.
There are at least two problems of course. I'm probably not that smart and I don't buy lottery tickets.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y agoWe've had `make` for north of forty years. I'm all for it being demoted to the penultimate build system but we mustn't ignore our Sisyphean tendencies. I personally hope Nix eats the world.
- Rochus 3y agoMaybe the long lost relative has already developed an ultimate build system nobody knows of.
- GuB-42 3y agoI am sure that some companies would spend billions (yes, with a "b") for that. And they already have some of the smartest people on Earth working for them. The article is more theory than practice. It practice, the big problem is not really about knowing what should be rebuilt. It is about tying the work of many people with different ideas on how thing should be done together. The part about getting the build order correct, which is what the article is about is still important. But that's typically not the reason why everyone hates build systems. People can live with the occasional inefficiency, or "make clean". But getting that binary-only library that is not in the standard location with that source-only other library and its weird versioning scheme, both needing a different version of the same third library, written in a different programming language and using a different packet manager...