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Re: Oh no...
by tfry on Friday 16/Sep/2005, @04:37
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Though this thread is probably long since dead, I can't resist chiming in for a rant:
> There are good documents people should consider reading, if you are not
> willing to spent time reading the auto* documents then you are not suited to
> make good files that work perfectly with your software. The problem with KDE
> rejecting auto* is that everone I've met so far complained about auto* but
> in reality it's because no one really spent time reading the manuals, they
> all want some quick hacks so it works and they start to copy stuff from
> other modules and wonder why it doesn't really work. How comes millions of
> open source and free software except the stuff inside KDE works perfectly
> fine with auto* ?
And this is precisely, where the problem is. I want to develop cool software. I don't want to spend hours wrestling with makefiles. I want them to just work. And when they don't work, I want to be able to understand, why not, and fix them, without having to read a week's worth of docs.
Also, I do want to just "copy stuff from other modules", maybe not blindly, but the fact alone that this is non-trivial is just plain bad. I have literally spend days of my life pondering layer after layer of files, auto-generated from files, auto-generated from files, each generation process using a different language - all just to track down some small annoying bug preventing the build on some other people's systems (where it went fine for me, so much about portability).
And yes, I have read the docs. Not from start-to-end, I admit, but trying desparately to find a pointer to my problems. Generally with little luck. In the end, so far, I've always found a solution, so, yes, I guess that goes to say, auto* can do about anything you want, if you just use it right. And millions of projects have somehow managed to tame the beast, eventually. But at what cost?
Admittedly, I don't know scons much, and I'm sure it has its quirks, needs testing on exotic architectures, etc, maybe even one or two more years to be considered mature. But at least: It's consistent within itself: Using only one language instead of four. It's supposed to be modular - hooray! - finally we will actually be able to understand _and influence_ what's going on in the build process without years of studying auto-stuff.
Modularity and consistency - if you can't achieve those in your framework, I'm sure any programmer will tell you, then it's simply flawed. Better ditch it sooner rather than later. |
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