[Gnu-arch-users] Re: [going OT] build tool design, was: tlator-0.1 initial release

[MJ Ray]

On 2003-09-18 04:55:13 +0100 Doran Moppert 
<address@hidden> wrote:
> funny how better-designed tools get both support and resistance from 
> the same
> people in different contexts :). Not that I can talk -- I still use 
> Make [...]

I have problems understanding why people consider alternatives like 
cons and scons better designed.  It's not a point that their own 
documentation makes very convincingly.  For example, cons seems to 
offer shared NFS trees with desync'd clocks as a motivation for using 
it.  Well, if you have NFS and desync'd clocks, make goofing is the 
least of your problems!  You need to fix the clocks anyway.  
Meanwhile, cons seemed not to do an equivalent of -j builds, which are 
a really handy thing on multiprocessor systems.  scons offers little 
motivation for itself beyond being a restructured cons (which puts 
more doubt on cons).

When all's said and done, Make actually seems capable of doing what it 
sets out to do: constuct dependency graphs and figure out a solution 
for the requested target based on certain information.  It's also 
capable of being used in a way that prevents it doing that properly 
(recursive make fans, are you listening?) but you can break most tools 
if you try hard enough.

The only alternative that I've seen which seems to offer benefits is 
cook.  Even those benefits (faster graph construction/solution and 
more human-friendly syntax) may not be worth the cost of using it for 
small projects.  Cook is quite badly promoted, too: why on earth is 
the manual not obviously online as nice HTML?  Cue another 
documentation tools thread...

--
MJR/slef     My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ address@hidden
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