8 ms·

Pet peeve: when people who haven't used Windows in 20 years write build instructions on Windows that still use the command prompt or just tell you to download M

Pet peeve: when people who haven't used Windows in 20 years write build instructions on Windows that still use the command prompt or just tell you to download MSYS or something

ranger_danger 2y ago
What would you prefer? I think VS and friends are a whole lot more bloated and annoying to use. For reference I have been developing on both platforms for 20 years.
- novagameco 2y ago
  Cmake is pretty standard so windows users could just generate their own project files. But I mean not using .bat files or the command prompt like it's 2001. Powershell scripts are more common with Windows developers these days and is a far better syntax than batch files. But Visual Studio/MSBuild is the de facto way to compile code for MSVC (which the instructions use anyways, but bizarrely compiling the projects via CLI instead of MSBuild). The whole project just seems like it was written using 1990s build patterns. It doesn't even have a modern build system for linux, let alone windows
  - saurik 2y ago
    > The whole project just seems like it was written using 1990s build patterns. It doesn't even have a modern build system for linux, let alone windows This project doesn't have a build system at all, nor should it: it is a single source file that you might add to your existing project and build using your build system... and even that source just includes the header, so presumably you wouldn't even do that and would just include the header from your existing code. It would be absolutely ridiculous for this header to have its own build system.
badsectoracula 2y ago
I've used Windows many times the last 20 years and i'd rather use MSYS2 to build a C/C++ program than MSVC as it allows me to use the exact same tools i'd prefer to use on Linux and macOS (...i don't really prefer to use macOS, but i can still use the same tools there too) than having Windows be its own special snowflake. And i find current MSVC incredibly bloated. I see in other comments you mentioned Powershell and CMake and TBH these are two things i avoided whenever i used Windows. CMake is used too much to be able to avoid it on Linux (which is currently my main OS) but it is not a tool i'd use myself if i had the choice. If i had to use a tool that generates build files, i'd rather use premake[0] as it is a self-contained binary with very simple Lua-based scripts (by default they look declarative but you can extend it as much as you want - i've even used a script to generate CMake files since these can be parsed by Qt Creator). The only downside is that on Unix systems it doesn't know concept of a shared library (can be "taught" with a custom script but it isn't something that is available out of the box). [0] https://premake.github.io/ https://premake.github.io/
Night_Thastus 2y ago
Nothing wrong with using MSYS! Let me tell you as someone who has used virtual machines, done native development, and used tools like WSL...MSYS is really nice in context. It's not as fast as bare native, but it's leagues better than a virtual machine and plenty fast enough for daily work. It has lots of the latest tooling (just recently it updated to GCC14 a couple days after GCC14 released). It has all the nice toolchains set up with a simple pacman call instead of having to compile everything yourself or go to esoteric sources to get it installed. Most importantly, it just works the vast majority of the time. I very rarely have to fix something because of an MSYS concern. Almost all of my time is spent actually developing. (Although they are for different work: That is NOT true on WSL, where it feels like I spend weeks just trying to get it up and working for a few days of productive work)
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  Personally I'm not a fan of Unix tools. I prefer powershell to bash and I like the cmdlets from it better than gnu tools. I don't use WSL for anything. I want more projects to have windows native instructions rather than copping out and using a kind of fake Unix environment
  - Night_Thastus 2y ago
    What a hot take. Some of the latest MS stuff like Powershell is fine, and far better than it used to be. But it just pales in comparison to the mountain of great tools, addons, plugins, packages and so on available in a Unix environment. I mean heck, what do you even do for something like clang-format?
    - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
      > But it just pales in comparison to the mountain of great tools, addons, plugins, packages and so on available in a Unix environment Visual Studio 2022 is a complete development environment that more than outdoes any Unix environment. Running, debugging, profiling, benchmarking, configuring ABI/warning options, VS 2022 has it all. > what do you even do for something like clang-format Funnily enough... VS 2022 comes with it[1] :) [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/reference/options-text-editor-c-cpp-formatting?view=vs-2022 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/reference...

Pet peeve: when people who haven't used Windows in 20 years write build instructions on Windows that still use the command prompt or just tell you to download MSYS or something

ranger_danger 2y ago

What would you prefer? I think VS and friends are a whole lot more bloated and annoying to use. For reference I have been developing on both platforms for 20 years.

novagameco 2y ago
Cmake is pretty standard so windows users could just generate their own project files. But I mean not using .bat files or the command prompt like it's 2001. Powershell scripts are more common with Windows developers these days and is a far better syntax than batch files. But Visual Studio/MSBuild is the de facto way to compile code for MSVC (which the instructions use anyways, but bizarrely compiling the projects via CLI instead of MSBuild). The whole project just seems like it was written using 1990s build patterns. It doesn't even have a modern build system for linux, let alone windows
- saurik 2y ago
  > The whole project just seems like it was written using 1990s build patterns. It doesn't even have a modern build system for linux, let alone windows This project doesn't have a build system at all, nor should it: it is a single source file that you might add to your existing project and build using your build system... and even that source just includes the header, so presumably you wouldn't even do that and would just include the header from your existing code. It would be absolutely ridiculous for this header to have its own build system.

badsectoracula 2y ago

I've used Windows many times the last 20 years and i'd rather use MSYS2 to build a C/C++ program than MSVC as it allows me to use the exact same tools i'd prefer to use on Linux and macOS (...i don't really prefer to use macOS, but i can still use the same tools there too) than having Windows be its own special snowflake. And i find current MSVC incredibly bloated. I see in other comments you mentioned Powershell and CMake and TBH these are two things i avoided whenever i used Windows. CMake is used too much to be able to avoid it on Linux (which is currently my main OS) but it is not a tool i'd use myself if i had the choice. If i had to use a tool that generates build files, i'd rather use premake[0] as it is a self-contained binary with very simple Lua-based scripts (by default they look declarative but you can extend it as much as you want - i've even used a script to generate CMake files since these can be parsed by Qt Creator). The only downside is that on Unix systems it doesn't know concept of a shared library (can be "taught" with a custom script but it isn't something that is available out of the box). [0] https://premake.github.io/ https://premake.github.io/

Night_Thastus 2y ago

Nothing wrong with using MSYS! Let me tell you as someone who has used virtual machines, done native development, and used tools like WSL...MSYS is really nice in context. It's not as fast as bare native, but it's leagues better than a virtual machine and plenty fast enough for daily work. It has lots of the latest tooling (just recently it updated to GCC14 a couple days after GCC14 released). It has all the nice toolchains set up with a simple pacman call instead of having to compile everything yourself or go to esoteric sources to get it installed. Most importantly, it just works the vast majority of the time. I very rarely have to fix something because of an MSYS concern. Almost all of my time is spent actually developing. (Although they are for different work: That is NOT true on WSL, where it feels like I spend weeks just trying to get it up and working for a few days of productive work)

shortrounddev2 2y ago
Personally I'm not a fan of Unix tools. I prefer powershell to bash and I like the cmdlets from it better than gnu tools. I don't use WSL for anything. I want more projects to have windows native instructions rather than copping out and using a kind of fake Unix environment
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  What a hot take. Some of the latest MS stuff like Powershell is fine, and far better than it used to be. But it just pales in comparison to the mountain of great tools, addons, plugins, packages and so on available in a Unix environment. I mean heck, what do you even do for something like clang-format?
  - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
    > But it just pales in comparison to the mountain of great tools, addons, plugins, packages and so on available in a Unix environment Visual Studio 2022 is a complete development environment that more than outdoes any Unix environment. Running, debugging, profiling, benchmarking, configuring ABI/warning options, VS 2022 has it all. > what do you even do for something like clang-format Funnily enough... VS 2022 comes with it[1] :) [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/reference/options-text-editor-c-cpp-formatting?view=vs-2022 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/ide/reference...