Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 25 May 2023 14:36:40 +0000
> From: Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>
> cc: tomas@tuxteam.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > The answers were clear, but they didn't present any solutions to the 
> > issues I brought up.  None of the tools I'm aware of, including Cargo, 
> > support interactive selection of dependencies based on their features 
> > and requirements, nor provide any decision support for the kind of 
> > decisions I described.  They allow you to specify a version, but leave 
> > the actual decision process to you.  And if that is the case, why do I 
> > need them? I can easily build stuff myself once I've figured out which 
> > versions of what dependencies I need.
> >
> > And there's no need for you to work hard to try to represent the 
> > problems as having their solutions.  Those build tools do not intend to 
> > solve those problems, they don't even consider them problems.  They 
> > "know better".  The facilities you described are nothing more than lip 
> > service.
> >
> 
> Then I guess I don't understand what these problems are, and what kind of 
> solution you are after.  Let's take a concrete example of a popular Rust 
> program: ripgrep.  All you need to build it is:
> 
> git clone https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
> cargo build --release
> 
> or (even simpler):
> 
> cargo install ripgrep
> 
> That (relatively simple) program depends on no less than 37 Rust 
> libraries, and has two optional build options, "pcre2" and "simd-accel". 
> If you activate these two options the program depends on 45 libraries. 
> What would you want do do with those 45 libraries?  What do you mean in 
> this concrete case by "interactive selection of dependencies based on 
> their features and requirements"?

I don't see how I can add anything to what I described already, and in
detail; see

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2023-05/msg00578.html

What I'd like is for the installation procedure to present the
information I need for making those decisions, and help me make them.

Btw, I was only talking about optional dependencies.  For mandatory
dependencies, the only important aspect is whether I'd need to upgrade
libraries I already have to newer versions, and if so, whether those
newer versions will cause compatibility problems with programs I have
installed that use those libraries.  This is also something a typical
package installation will not let me control: they will just upgrade
the other programs as well, whether I want that or not.

Anyway, I don't see why we should continue this sub-thread: I just
wanted to express my deep mistrust of any such "automatic installation
and build" packages; YMMV.