On 2/10/2013 4:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
On 2/10/13 2:37 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
These things make me nervous - they are complex and when they go wrong
it can be baffling. Is it really a problem to have the user simply edit
the file to match his system?
Not sure how complex the script is, but generally asking users to edit
makefiles to match does not scale well at all. IMHO there's a sort of goodness
hierarchy when it comes to scripting:
1. one command that does everything, e.g. "./world" or "make world"
10. one command with arguments, and the exact arguments depend on the system,
e.g. "make DMD_HOME=/usr/bin/dmd MODEL=64"
100. asking the user to edit configuration files by hand in order to get
things done
1000. manual with a recipe with steps for getting things done
10000. folklore on how to get things done
There's a big drop in automation from one level to the next, and in particular
there's a surprising drop from the command to the command with specific
parameters.
The general difficulty is one I've had with MS tools from the 1980's: they
change in unpredictable ways from release to release, and a *lot* of time gets
wasted trying to deal with multiple versions and the endless calls for help
about it not working with some random new version. We see this in a smaller way
with the evolution of Apple's OSX tools - it's constant breakage. Linux tends to
be pretty stable from year to year.
Instead of being terribly clever about it, having a simple edittable file is at
least easier to support.
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