On Monday, 30 November 2015 at 18:50:57 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
you had to write you own Java coded Maven plugin. So having a language which can offer a declarative DSL and the ability to do a bit of imperative stuff if it is needed, you get a good system. SCons and Gradle both do this: mostly declarative with bits as needed.
I don't know them, I am sure you have a point :). But intuitively I think that modern build systems _ought_ to use a constraints-based language and be geared towards distributed builds... take that as an heartfelt opinion, not a fact.
However in doing this there is often forward progress in build.
GNU make is good enough for my own stuff, but probably not so good for cross platform builds.
As for package managers, I'd much rather have a really good generic repository (like Debian) with precompiled vetted and patched quality libraries than all these language specific ones where 99% is useless/unfinished/unmaintained.
Take a look at node.js: 210820 packages. How do you find new gems in that mess? It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find quality stuff on github by searching IMO. Too much dead unfinished stuff. Maybe that's why Open Source repository sites die. They drown in dead code.
Besides, dealing with 10 different packaging systems, potential security risks and potential configuration conflicts is not entertaining.
In the end though Lisp is the one true language, so we should all just write in Lisp.
Yes, keep it simple and do numbers in unary notation.
