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The thing is, 20 years ago maybe you developed on a Sun box, then the guy down the hall tried to compile it on his HP machine and it crapped itself because of s
by jff 14y ago
The thing is, 20 years ago maybe you developed on a Sun box, then the guy down the hall tried to compile it on his HP machine and it crapped itself because of some Sun-related assumption you made in setting things up. Then you mail it to a colleague across the state and he compiles it on OSF/1, hurrah!
But now, people write Linux libraries, tested on a Linux box, for people running Linux, and only compiled on Linux. There may be OS X support. That's it. This is not the 1980s, where 10,000 Unixes bloomed. With 4 Makefiles, you could support Linux, OS X, Windows, and FreeBSD, and thus cover 99% of your audience. I'm sick of watching configure scripts take longer to run than the actual compilation.
- dlitz 14y agoThe Linuxes still have different library locations, and things move around as new things get added (e.g. multiarch). Seriously, get over it and just use autotools.
- jff 14y agoGet over it and just use your slide rule. Get over it and use punched card decks, timesharing is a fad. Get over it and use FORTRAN. Get over it and just use Windows.
- jimwise 14y agoExcept that before "just supporting Linux (and maybe MacOS)" was the thing to do, it was "just support Sun (and maybe HP-UX)". And before that, it was "just support BSD/Vax (and maybe SVR2)". So, when you take a broader view than "just support what everyone uses", you're not just helping niche platforms -- you're future-proofing.