8 ms·

How about making the language more accessible to newcomers by providing a sane default way of doing package management and builds. Go is a great example of both

How about making the language more accessible to newcomers by providing a sane default way of doing package management and builds. Go is a great example of both things done reasonably well out of the box.

plq 12y ago
From where I'm standing, C++ package management is already quite nicely solved by what we call package managers in the linux world. You know, portage, aptitude, etc.
- 1971genocide 12y ago
  Linux is used by 1% of all computer users on the planet. Trying to program C++ in windows is an horrible experience that I wont wish on my worst enemy. Linux is nice, but it doesn't have after effects, support for the latest ultrabooks, photoshop ( sorry GIMP is a joke ). Linux also contantly breaks whenever I tried using it, sound, video ? Also gaming. Anyway the browser environment is cool because it forced everyone to stick to a single standard. ( Also corporate uses windows, sadly. Working with tools created by major corporations in my industry is on windows )
  - w0rm 12y ago
    You can use something like vagrant for you dev environment.
    - 1971genocide 12y ago
      I tried using VM Ware, it comes with its own set of problems. It constantly gets stuck. I will give vagrant a try though.
      - coldtea 12y ago
        Perhaps you're doing it wrong? Your cross-platform OS skills doesn't sound very strong. Maybe should practice some more in the different ways various OS work.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - fastflo 12y ago
    i am so sorry for you. and all your excuses...
    - 1971genocide 12y ago
      Its funny how strong the ideological stance exists among programmers. Any comment making fun of windows always get upvoted even if its just anecdotal. My experience is also anecdotal and needs to be taken just a data point. Linux users seem to not be able to stomach any constructive criticism. I tried using linux for a long time - the problem is life got in the way. I need to provide lab reports and do mathematics. Linux is a hassle for any non-programmer. Maybe when I get a decent laptop like DELL XPS that can run linux I will give it another try. For now though I am having to stick to a single ultrabook for various reason and linux is not friendly to new-comers. Just my experience.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Your downvotes are (I guess) not for criticising Linux but for doing so in a flame-baity way.
      - rhodysurf 12y ago
        I dont understand why you cant make lab reports and do mathematics on Linux? Serious scientific papers are written using Latex, not Microsoft Word. And what math software doesnt run on Linux?
        stinos 12y ago
        Serious scientific papers are written using Latex, not Microsoft Word You'd be surprised. I know labs publishing multiple high impact papers pretty much each year and then some more less high impact papers and they all use Word. Also PowerPoint for posters. Probably not the best tools for the job, but I see that often in research.
  - Certhas 12y ago
    But Linux is used by a vastly larger percentage of C++ programers. As an amateur, I've found kdenlive and audacity provide decent video and audio editing on Linux. Professionals use Mac. Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now. If you want a laptop with Linux support out of the box, you can pay for that and it will just work (e.g. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn#!facets=80770~0~1791343&p=1 http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=...) Gaming is a fair point, but even that might be changing with Valves efforts. I use Windows, Mac and Linux each, they all have their advantages, but for serious software development Linux is ahead of MacOsX and both are way ahead of Windows.
    - maccard 12y ago
      > Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now. Windows 8 has worked out of the box on every configuration I've tried, with the caveat that it installs non up to date drivers (e.g. High end graphics cards). My experience with Linux (Ubuntu 15.04) is that the little use peripherals I have don't work at all ( I've a Bluetooth usb adapter and a usb capture card that both are plug and play on windows vista onwards but I've yet to find working drivers on Linux for).
  - jjuhl 12y ago
    Linux desktop use may hover at a few percent. But once you look beyond the desktop and to embedded and server use the percentage is far far higher. And personally, as a Linux user since ~1995, I'd say that Linux can work quite well for all the things you mention ;-)
  - fla 12y ago
    Maybe, but did you know that Linux is used by the large majority of computers on the planet ?
  - Nursie 12y ago
    Wow. I haven't seen that troll for a few years, maybe not since the early 2000s. Here's the thing - if you can't make linux work for you at this point in time then you really have no business being in technology, at all.
- jeremyjh 12y ago
  That's all well and good up to a point - but large production systems need repeatable builds that do not depend on the developers OS version or patch level. Eventually you have to vendor every dependency.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    This is what is called API and ABI stability. Most well-known C and C++ libraries have been API and ABI stable for years. In practice, this hasn't been a problem for my C++ projects for years, except on OS X where there have been too many changes in a couple of years (gcc -> gcc-llvm -> clang, libstdc++ -> libc++).
- nawitus 12y ago
  There's a few problems with this: * It only works in Linux, not Windows or Mac OS X. * You need additional work to have it work in more distributions * Linux package file formats are not distribution neutral, there's no "package.json" which is understood by every package manager I think C++ needs an OS neutral package management system.
- Timmmmmm 12y ago
  They are hacks that paper over the lack of good package management. Plus they are too much extra work, and OS-specific. No build system integrates with them as far as I know. I think what people want is something like go, where you add a single line to your code and it magically downloads and compiles the referenced library. C++ doesn't have anything like that (and I doubt it ever will to be honest).
  - pcwalton 12y ago
    > I think what people want is something like go, where you add a single line to your code and it magically downloads and compiles the referenced library. Not like Go. It needs to solve versioning.
ris 12y ago
Ugh. Language-based package managers are one of the biggest misfeatures of the millenium. They're all well and good* until they have to interact with the world outside their language universe. * I'm being very generous here.
- tomp 12y ago
  Hm... Can you elaborate? I have nothing but good things to say about PIP (the only package manager I've used extensively).
  - riffraff 12y ago
    the world outside would be, e.g. system libraries. Python package X depend on libxml-foo or libmagick-bar-6.6.7..
    - tomp 12y ago
      Either I've never used Python libraries that would need external libraries, or PIP installs those as well. I definitely know that it can compile code as well, e.g. for installing Numpy/Pandas.
      - krastanov 12y ago
        It does not. To keep to the scientific python examples you mentioned: It is a pain to install `matplotlib` with pip if you do not have the C libraries for image compression. (Still, I like pip+virtualenv quite a bit, but they are definitely insufficient when C modules are involved).
  - lambda 12y ago
    It's frustrating having the proliferation of different package managers. Each one can work well in isolation; but when you then need to integrate with your platform package manager or another language's package manager, you get a combinatorial explosion of possible interactions. One example that I've been particularly frustrated by recently is Python/Emacs integration. I have Emacs and Python installed via my system package manager (apt). Then there are a bunch of Emacs modes that I need to install via the Emacs package manager (elpy and its dependencies). Those in turn have dependencies on Python packages (rope/flake8). And finally I have a bunch of different python packages that I work on that are all linked to from a virtualenv so that they'll all resolve properly in all of those tools. If I upgrade one part of that system (apt, emacs packages, python packages), it frequently breaks other parts, because there aren't any proper dependencies between them. I then have to spend a while fiddling with the whole setup to get it back up and running again. Basically, the more package managers you have, the less value they have. The whole point of package managers is to manage a whole set of packages together, so you don't have to manually go through and resolve all of the dependencies yourself, manually figure out which version of this package goes with what version of that package. But every time there is some dependency between two different package managers, that breaks down. Another part of the frustration is that they are all basically doing the same thing, but with slightly different implementations. In the end, a package manager's purpose is to let you figure out which packages you need, by resolving dependencies while honoring version constraints, fetch those packages from an archive somewhere (and verify that they are intact and haven't been tampered with), unpack them and install the files in the right places, and run some glue code to set up indexes, documentation, and so on appropriately. The only part of that task which really needs to differ between package managers is that glue code, plus the policies for inclusion in the centralized archive; everything else is basically solving the same problem in a whole bunch of slightly different ways (different ways of representing and comparing version numbers, different ways of verifying package integrity, different ways of doing local mirrors, etc), and so you get a whole bunch of incompatible and differently buggy implementations of the same kinds of things, or some functionality just missing from certain package managers. What I would really like to see is a single unified package manager core, that handles all of the basic functionality that they all set out to solve, with the ability to utilize multiple different repositories (so that different projects could have their own policies for inclusion and sets of packages that are designed to work together), and appropriate places to hook in all of the language (or distro) specific glue that you need. I've been mulling over trying to write such a package manager, but of course when doing so you need to be careful or you will run into this problem: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
alamaison 12y ago
You might like to try Hunter: https://github.com/ruslo/hunter https://github.com/ruslo/hunter Cross-platform C++ package management using CMake only.
vitaut 12y ago
There is a package manager for C++ called Biicode: https://www.biicode.com/ https://www.biicode.com/
davidgerard 12y ago
"Every program will eventually include a sketchy rewrite of apt-get." - me. Not just languages - WordPress, MediaWiki ... If you're very lucky it won't clash horribly with apt and yum. So you probably won't be lucky.
maxlybbert 12y ago
That would be the modules proposal. And the standardized ABI.

plq 12y ago

From where I'm standing, C++ package management is already quite nicely solved by what we call package managers in the linux world. You know, portage, aptitude, etc.

1971genocide 12y ago
Linux is used by 1% of all computer users on the planet. Trying to program C++ in windows is an horrible experience that I wont wish on my worst enemy. Linux is nice, but it doesn't have after effects, support for the latest ultrabooks, photoshop ( sorry GIMP is a joke ). Linux also contantly breaks whenever I tried using it, sound, video ? Also gaming. Anyway the browser environment is cool because it forced everyone to stick to a single standard. ( Also corporate uses windows, sadly. Working with tools created by major corporations in my industry is on windows )
- w0rm 12y ago
  You can use something like vagrant for you dev environment.
  - 1971genocide 12y ago
    I tried using VM Ware, it comes with its own set of problems. It constantly gets stuck. I will give vagrant a try though.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Perhaps you're doing it wrong? Your cross-platform OS skills doesn't sound very strong. Maybe should practice some more in the different ways various OS work.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- fastflo 12y ago
  i am so sorry for you. and all your excuses...
  - 1971genocide 12y ago
    Its funny how strong the ideological stance exists among programmers. Any comment making fun of windows always get upvoted even if its just anecdotal. My experience is also anecdotal and needs to be taken just a data point. Linux users seem to not be able to stomach any constructive criticism. I tried using linux for a long time - the problem is life got in the way. I need to provide lab reports and do mathematics. Linux is a hassle for any non-programmer. Maybe when I get a decent laptop like DELL XPS that can run linux I will give it another try. For now though I am having to stick to a single ultrabook for various reason and linux is not friendly to new-comers. Just my experience.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Your downvotes are (I guess) not for criticising Linux but for doing so in a flame-baity way.
    - rhodysurf 12y ago
      I dont understand why you cant make lab reports and do mathematics on Linux? Serious scientific papers are written using Latex, not Microsoft Word. And what math software doesnt run on Linux?
      - stinos 12y ago
        Serious scientific papers are written using Latex, not Microsoft Word You'd be surprised. I know labs publishing multiple high impact papers pretty much each year and then some more less high impact papers and they all use Word. Also PowerPoint for posters. Probably not the best tools for the job, but I see that often in research.
- Certhas 12y ago
  But Linux is used by a vastly larger percentage of C++ programers. As an amateur, I've found kdenlive and audacity provide decent video and audio editing on Linux. Professionals use Mac. Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now. If you want a laptop with Linux support out of the box, you can pay for that and it will just work (e.g. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn#!facets=80770~0~1791343&p=1 http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=...) Gaming is a fair point, but even that might be changing with Valves efforts. I use Windows, Mac and Linux each, they all have their advantages, but for serious software development Linux is ahead of MacOsX and both are way ahead of Windows.
  - maccard 12y ago
    > Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now. Windows 8 has worked out of the box on every configuration I've tried, with the caveat that it installs non up to date drivers (e.g. High end graphics cards). My experience with Linux (Ubuntu 15.04) is that the little use peripherals I have don't work at all ( I've a Bluetooth usb adapter and a usb capture card that both are plug and play on windows vista onwards but I've yet to find working drivers on Linux for).
- jjuhl 12y ago
  Linux desktop use may hover at a few percent. But once you look beyond the desktop and to embedded and server use the percentage is far far higher. And personally, as a Linux user since ~1995, I'd say that Linux can work quite well for all the things you mention ;-)
- fla 12y ago
  Maybe, but did you know that Linux is used by the large majority of computers on the planet ?
- Nursie 12y ago
  Wow. I haven't seen that troll for a few years, maybe not since the early 2000s. Here's the thing - if you can't make linux work for you at this point in time then you really have no business being in technology, at all.
jeremyjh 12y ago
That's all well and good up to a point - but large production systems need repeatable builds that do not depend on the developers OS version or patch level. Eventually you have to vendor every dependency.
- danieldk 12y ago
  This is what is called API and ABI stability. Most well-known C and C++ libraries have been API and ABI stable for years. In practice, this hasn't been a problem for my C++ projects for years, except on OS X where there have been too many changes in a couple of years (gcc -> gcc-llvm -> clang, libstdc++ -> libc++).
nawitus 12y ago
There's a few problems with this: * It only works in Linux, not Windows or Mac OS X. * You need additional work to have it work in more distributions * Linux package file formats are not distribution neutral, there's no "package.json" which is understood by every package manager I think C++ needs an OS neutral package management system.
Timmmmmm 12y ago
They are hacks that paper over the lack of good package management. Plus they are too much extra work, and OS-specific. No build system integrates with them as far as I know. I think what people want is something like go, where you add a single line to your code and it magically downloads and compiles the referenced library. C++ doesn't have anything like that (and I doubt it ever will to be honest).
- pcwalton 12y ago
  > I think what people want is something like go, where you add a single line to your code and it magically downloads and compiles the referenced library. Not like Go. It needs to solve versioning.

ris 12y ago

Ugh. Language-based package managers are one of the biggest misfeatures of the millenium. They're all well and good* until they have to interact with the world outside their language universe. * I'm being very generous here.

tomp 12y ago
Hm... Can you elaborate? I have nothing but good things to say about PIP (the only package manager I've used extensively).
- riffraff 12y ago
  the world outside would be, e.g. system libraries. Python package X depend on libxml-foo or libmagick-bar-6.6.7..
  - tomp 12y ago
    Either I've never used Python libraries that would need external libraries, or PIP installs those as well. I definitely know that it can compile code as well, e.g. for installing Numpy/Pandas.
    - krastanov 12y ago
      It does not. To keep to the scientific python examples you mentioned: It is a pain to install `matplotlib` with pip if you do not have the C libraries for image compression. (Still, I like pip+virtualenv quite a bit, but they are definitely insufficient when C modules are involved).
- lambda 12y ago
  It's frustrating having the proliferation of different package managers. Each one can work well in isolation; but when you then need to integrate with your platform package manager or another language's package manager, you get a combinatorial explosion of possible interactions. One example that I've been particularly frustrated by recently is Python/Emacs integration. I have Emacs and Python installed via my system package manager (apt). Then there are a bunch of Emacs modes that I need to install via the Emacs package manager (elpy and its dependencies). Those in turn have dependencies on Python packages (rope/flake8). And finally I have a bunch of different python packages that I work on that are all linked to from a virtualenv so that they'll all resolve properly in all of those tools. If I upgrade one part of that system (apt, emacs packages, python packages), it frequently breaks other parts, because there aren't any proper dependencies between them. I then have to spend a while fiddling with the whole setup to get it back up and running again. Basically, the more package managers you have, the less value they have. The whole point of package managers is to manage a whole set of packages together, so you don't have to manually go through and resolve all of the dependencies yourself, manually figure out which version of this package goes with what version of that package. But every time there is some dependency between two different package managers, that breaks down. Another part of the frustration is that they are all basically doing the same thing, but with slightly different implementations. In the end, a package manager's purpose is to let you figure out which packages you need, by resolving dependencies while honoring version constraints, fetch those packages from an archive somewhere (and verify that they are intact and haven't been tampered with), unpack them and install the files in the right places, and run some glue code to set up indexes, documentation, and so on appropriately. The only part of that task which really needs to differ between package managers is that glue code, plus the policies for inclusion in the centralized archive; everything else is basically solving the same problem in a whole bunch of slightly different ways (different ways of representing and comparing version numbers, different ways of verifying package integrity, different ways of doing local mirrors, etc), and so you get a whole bunch of incompatible and differently buggy implementations of the same kinds of things, or some functionality just missing from certain package managers. What I would really like to see is a single unified package manager core, that handles all of the basic functionality that they all set out to solve, with the ability to utilize multiple different repositories (so that different projects could have their own policies for inclusion and sets of packages that are designed to work together), and appropriate places to hook in all of the language (or distro) specific glue that you need. I've been mulling over trying to write such a package manager, but of course when doing so you need to be careful or you will run into this problem: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

alamaison 12y ago

You might like to try Hunter: https://github.com/ruslo/hunter https://github.com/ruslo/hunter Cross-platform C++ package management using CMake only.

vitaut 12y ago

There is a package manager for C++ called Biicode: https://www.biicode.com/ https://www.biicode.com/

davidgerard 12y ago

"Every program will eventually include a sketchy rewrite of apt-get." - me. Not just languages - WordPress, MediaWiki ... If you're very lucky it won't clash horribly with apt and yum. So you probably won't be lucky.

maxlybbert 12y ago

That would be the modules proposal. And the standardized ABI.