4 ms·

> On the other hand, narwhal and tusk do not run on Windows and are no longer being maintained. You can't blame them for not staying with narwhal. And I'm sur

> On the other hand, narwhal and tusk do not run on Windows and are no longer being maintained. You can't blame them for not staying with narwhal. And I'm sure you are not suggesting that they should switch back to ant or rake. Honestly, I don't understand the unnecessary snarkiness of some people on this site.

charliesome 14y ago
So I took a quick look at the Jakefile and it doesn't seem like it does a whole lot more than shelling out and a little bit of file manipulation. I wonder if Cappuccino has considered using make. make is maintained. make works on Windows. make is unglamorous but it works and it has worked for decades.
- boucher 14y ago
  Being able to work in JavaScript code is valuable to our users (and to the project itself). Learning make would be a significant barrier for many of them.
- halostatue 14y ago
  * Make introduces non-platform-related dependencies (e.g., you now need a make binary, not available by default on Windows, and not needed by anything else in the JavaScript development toolchain). * nmake, bsdmake, and gnumake are all slightly incompatible with each other if you want to do something smart.
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  IIRC, one reason we wrote a build system in JavaScript was the compiler itself ran in Rhino, and the startup time of the JVM/Rhino was ridiculously slow when shelling out to it for each source file (hundreds of times in a full build of Cappuccino). Having the rest of the build system and compiler running in the same process eliminated that latency. And yes, we tried Nailgun (http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/ http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/) but I don't recall why that didn't work out. Perhaps there were better solutions, just pointing out it wasn't completely NIH syndrome.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
>Honestly, I don't understand the unnecessary snarkiness of some people on this site. Reflexive negativity is a problem, pg is aware of it. Hiding comment karma score was one attempt at mitigating it, hopefully he's got some more ideas as well. Definitely one of those big problems, with the Internet in general, looking for a solution.
- PommeDeTerre 14y ago
  I don't really see any "reflexive negativity" in the original comment. It's merely pointing out what seems to be a trend with this project and the build systems it uses. If there's any negativity involved, it's with how much time and effort (and donations...) the Cappuccino crew wastes with all of this repeated switching to the most-hyped software of the day.
  - legutierr 14y ago
    The original comment is certainly not charitable in its assumptions. Why must it be assumed that the Cappuccino team is just trying to be fashionable? What I see is a natural evolution from less appropriate alternatives to more appropriate alternatives as they gain maturity. npm is now the standard package manager for the language, something that jake might have tried to be but never was. And although node might be very fashionable and popular right now, I don't think anyone sees that role changing within the JavaScript ecosystem. If they hadn't switched people would be complaining that they use such an outdated system as jake.
    - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
      If pragmatism was their main concern, then they would have been using make, shell scripts and the common UNIX commands from the very beginning. This would have given them support for Linux, Solaris, the *BSDs, Mac OS X and a number of other systems right away. Windows could've been supported with ease by using the various ports of those tools. Those tools are extremely capable and well-proven for creating reliable, cross-platform build scripts.

charliesome 14y ago

So I took a quick look at the Jakefile and it doesn't seem like it does a whole lot more than shelling out and a little bit of file manipulation. I wonder if Cappuccino has considered using make. make is maintained. make works on Windows. make is unglamorous but it works and it has worked for decades.

boucher 14y ago
Being able to work in JavaScript code is valuable to our users (and to the project itself). Learning make would be a significant barrier for many of them.
halostatue 14y ago
* Make introduces non-platform-related dependencies (e.g., you now need a make binary, not available by default on Windows, and not needed by anything else in the JavaScript development toolchain). * nmake, bsdmake, and gnumake are all slightly incompatible with each other if you want to do something smart.
tlrobinson 14y ago
IIRC, one reason we wrote a build system in JavaScript was the compiler itself ran in Rhino, and the startup time of the JVM/Rhino was ridiculously slow when shelling out to it for each source file (hundreds of times in a full build of Cappuccino). Having the rest of the build system and compiler running in the same process eliminated that latency. And yes, we tried Nailgun (http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/ http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/) but I don't recall why that didn't work out. Perhaps there were better solutions, just pointing out it wasn't completely NIH syndrome.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

>Honestly, I don't understand the unnecessary snarkiness of some people on this site. Reflexive negativity is a problem, pg is aware of it. Hiding comment karma score was one attempt at mitigating it, hopefully he's got some more ideas as well. Definitely one of those big problems, with the Internet in general, looking for a solution.

PommeDeTerre 14y ago
I don't really see any "reflexive negativity" in the original comment. It's merely pointing out what seems to be a trend with this project and the build systems it uses. If there's any negativity involved, it's with how much time and effort (and donations...) the Cappuccino crew wastes with all of this repeated switching to the most-hyped software of the day.
- legutierr 14y ago
  The original comment is certainly not charitable in its assumptions. Why must it be assumed that the Cappuccino team is just trying to be fashionable? What I see is a natural evolution from less appropriate alternatives to more appropriate alternatives as they gain maturity. npm is now the standard package manager for the language, something that jake might have tried to be but never was. And although node might be very fashionable and popular right now, I don't think anyone sees that role changing within the JavaScript ecosystem. If they hadn't switched people would be complaining that they use such an outdated system as jake.
  - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
    If pragmatism was their main concern, then they would have been using make, shell scripts and the common UNIX commands from the very beginning. This would have given them support for Linux, Solaris, the *BSDs, Mac OS X and a number of other systems right away. Windows could've been supported with ease by using the various ports of those tools. Those tools are extremely capable and well-proven for creating reliable, cross-platform build scripts.