On Friday, 18 March 2016 at 15:31:26 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
Hmm, the build module could be compiled once. It sources are
supposed to stay unchanged, right?
Even "once" will be too much for majority of D users (those who
are not also Gentoo users at least :D). Remember - we are not
speaking about build as simple as `rdmd std/build.d` at this
point, it will have numerous additional dependencies, including
linker dependencies. And has to be perfectly cross-platform.
I think that std.build could be up to 10KLOC so the compilation
time would be not relevant.
Tight coupling of dependency management and build tool in one
entity is just too inflexible. This is single biggest issue I
have with dub in its current form.
Can you explain it by example (I don't mean dub problems,
which I agree
exist, but the inflexibility in general)?
I can't see a conflict between the two functionalities.
Typical example - we use custom Makefile based framework for
internal Sociomantic D projects, one which is much more capable
than existing dub build support and works decently for our
needs overall. There is no way it can be replaced with dub at
its current state. However using the very same dub to fetch
sources of 3d-party libraries and ensure version compatibility
is something quite desired.
When build tool and package management system are packed into
one tool, you pretty much need for both to be perfect to match
everyones desires. And that is simply impossible.
Thanks for explanation. Then let me quote Teoh's great
description of a practical build tool:
"I think a good balance can be drawn between providing enough
primitives that cover almost all conceivable use cases in a build
tool, and at the same time provide an "escape hatch" into a
full-fledged programming language for those rare but inevitable
cases where you need to go outside the box and do what the
designers didn't anticipate."
IMO this applies to all of compiling, configuring and fetching
sources or binaries and their dependencies.
I'm aware it's not possible to cover all use cases. But 90-95% is
achievable. The rest is relatively easily to be covered by custom
d code.
I started that
Piotrek
