‪Autoconf and make‬

Obsolete shit forced upon us by our ancestors, amIrite?
Why does every peace of crap C program I compile in Linux have to check for a Fortran 95 compiler? There's thousands of LOC in the final makefile doing shit like working around obscure bugs in versions of csh from the 80's.

I know there must be better shit out there. Auto-dependencies, platform independance, clean syntax, intelligible error messages.

GHC's --make

shut up nigger totse owns you

>>1
i prefer that than having UB in my applications/compilation.

Autoconf works fine on practically any platform. Is there a valid reason to throw it away and reinvent the wheel? ``thousands of LOC in the final makefile doing shit like working around obscure bugs in versions of csh from the 80's'' is a good thing because it means that the fucking thing will build even if my system happens to use '80s csh.

1) GHC's --make
2) Hand written Makefiles
3) People not trying to save time for themselves by using shitty tools but making it painful for others

>>5
Sure, autoconf works on any platform as long as you cram half a UNIX environment in it.

That you have to consider system shell behavior when making a makefile is the result of a fundamentally broken design. A large part of autoconf is just workarounds for that, and it takes some twisted logic to consider that a "good thing".

When you have a broken tool, cramming another abstraction layer on top of it just worsens things. More complexities for bugs to breed in, and even if people switch you're stuck with the old tool forever. Not to mention the almost useless error messages you get when the make tool fails deep down in layers of autogenerated obfuscated code. They have to output a stream of useless status messages just so you have the slightest chance of guessing where the error originated.

>>6
Yeah, hand written makefiles is pretty much what I go with. It'll break for 5-10% of users, but at least it will be easy to fix. Better than 2% of users getting inscrutable failures.
That's useless for larger projects, though.

Makefile syntax is fucking horrible.  It is a mess.  I won't use it any moar for anything larger than 3-file project.
And person with a 80's csh should either upgrade or work around bugs with modern software himself, I don't care about him at all.  It is clearly not a good reason to keep a 300-megabyte configure script in my sauce tarball.

I LISTEN TO INFECTED MUSHROOM WHILE I WRITE JAVA BECAUSE I AM 1337

Moar!
- Does anyone have any experience with SCons, JAM, etc.?

- Are there any features you wish for that you haven't seen in any build tool? (Not even your apparently loved ghc --make?)

http://www.a-a-p.org/

Does building, autoconf stuff, package management and more.  Recommended.

I use Cabal because I am infected fagget

>>10
I tried SCons. As a calcified GNU make fan, I hated it from the get-go. Why do these faggots have to bring python-like syntax everywhere? Why do I have to enclose my lists in brackets, when in Make just separating items with whitespace (like you'd do in a command parameter list) works fine and is lighter weight too?

So yeah. Autoconf and make, perhaps you don't like them but they're here to stay. For C projects at least. Combine them with automatic dependency production in gcc, or (even better) automake for massive win.

For java though, Ant is pretty good. Only if it would toss the godawful "XML everywhere, including your poopar!" thing. That's fucking horrible.

>>10
Features I'd like to see? Autoconf ought to get a hierarchical configuration system. Like the Linux Kconfig, where configuration comes from a file and is editable from the command line, a hierarchical terminal user interface, from an X11 tcl/tk interface and a simple "yes/no/genuflect" type line-oriented thing. The file would be processed into a config.h just like in Autoconf according to a Makefile production rule.

Seriously. Anything's better than a million "--enable-this", "--with-red-fucker=/whatchamacallit/delta-thirty-three", "--disable-funroll-loops" options. This'd open the door for more build-time configurability which certain hunks of bloatware (openoffice.org, I'm looking at your fat fucking face) could certainly use.

I like Python, but I still want to murder the SCons developers with a rusty knife for coming up with that abomination.

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