Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 09:48, Etzion Bar-Noy eza...@tournament.org.il wrote: These kids are used to these four freedoms, illegal, but works fir them. If software is not open source, such as Windows and Microsoft Office, they don't have the freedom to modify it and redistribute it to friends. This is a basic freedom in free software. Of course one can also speak about the legal issues related to software - copying and redistributing software legally and illegally. By the way you can also speak about copying other files, such as music and videos - legally and illegally. Speak about eMule and Bit torrent (I use utorrent) - how you can use them do download music and films, and the fact that in many cases this is illegal in most countries. But also that one can use them to distribute original files legally, without having to pay for bandwidth and servers. Uri Even-Chen Mobile Phone: +972-50-9007559 E-mail: u...@speedy.net Website: http://www.speedy.net/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
i don't think that he should try to scare them, it's not the target. teenagers will simply revolt and wont listen to him. 2011/1/10 Etzion Bar-Noy eza...@tournament.org.il These kids are used to these four freedoms, illegal, but works fir them. You may want to stress that their current (probable) actions are illegal, and that the existing model of selling software is one which changes into selling services. Talk about the ability to avoid vendor-lock, as part of it (give them an example of a bug in the software and what they can do with it - commercial software vs OSS software). These kinds of things, I think. Ez On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Uri Even-Chen u...@speedy.net wrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 08:35, Gabor Szabo szab...@gmail.com wrote: hi, in the school of my son they are interested in getting some 1 hour long presentations from parents about various interesting subject. I could talk hours and days about Linux and Open Source in general but I wonder what do you think. What would be interesting to 13 year old kids? I am not sure free speech is interesting to them and unfortunately they are probably used to that every software is free beer. Given the cheats and cracks. So what do you think? I would recommend speaking about the free as in freedom concept of Linux and open source software - the 4 freedoms a software user should have, and that copying a software and giving a copy to your friend, modifying software etc. are basic freedoms anyone should have. Then speak about how Linux evolved, history of Linux and the status of Linux today. When I first started to learn programming, in 1983, I didn't know nothing about free software, open source software etc. Only after participating in open source conferences in 2001 and 2002 and reading the book free as in freedom (about Richard Stallman) I realized the free as in freedom concept and its advantages. Even today I'm still using non-free software such as Windows and Microsoft Office, but today I understand more about it than 10 years ago. Uri Even-Chen Mobile Phone: +972-50-9007559 E-mail: u...@speedy.net Website: http://www.speedy.net/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- the debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control Bruce Schneier ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
small linux hardware
I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf: http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 ) which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities) however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something smaller and cheaper... anyone knows of such a hardware ? thanks, erez. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:08:52AM +0200, Erez D wrote: I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf: http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 ) which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities) however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something smaller and cheaper... anyone knows of such a hardware ? I recalled from a few years ago an ad/article talking about a linux system the size of an RJ45 jack. A quick search finds this: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Linux-system-squishes-into-Ethernet-connector/ which links to netsilicon.com, which redirects to: http://www.digi.com/products/embeddedsolutions/ which has some nice toys. No prices listed. -- Didi ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
Hi Erez,
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:08:52AM +0200, Erez D wrote:
I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep
I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf:
http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 )
which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in
size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities)
however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something
smaller and cheaper...
anyone knows of such a hardware ?
See http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il/msg53770.html for some
pointers from Marc.
baruch
--
~. .~ Tk Open Systems
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Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care. The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has excellently mentioned. Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of people all over the world. That kind of thing talks to kids. The second thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really cool. --Alex 2011/1/10 Etzion Bar-Noy eza...@tournament.org.il These kids are used to these four freedoms, illegal, but works fir them. You may want to stress that their current (probable) actions are illegal, and that the existing model of selling software is one which changes into selling services. Talk about the ability to avoid vendor-lock, as part of it (give them an example of a bug in the software and what they can do with it - commercial software vs OSS software). These kinds of things, I think. Ez On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Uri Even-Chen u...@speedy.net wrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 08:35, Gabor Szabo szab...@gmail.com wrote: hi, in the school of my son they are interested in getting some 1 hour long presentations from parents about various interesting subject. I could talk hours and days about Linux and Open Source in general but I wonder what do you think. What would be interesting to 13 year old kids? I am not sure free speech is interesting to them and unfortunately they are probably used to that every software is free beer. Given the cheats and cracks. So what do you think? I would recommend speaking about the free as in freedom concept of Linux and open source software - the 4 freedoms a software user should have, and that copying a software and giving a copy to your friend, modifying software etc. are basic freedoms anyone should have. Then speak about how Linux evolved, history of Linux and the status of Linux today. When I first started to learn programming, in 1983, I didn't know nothing about free software, open source software etc. Only after participating in open source conferences in 2001 and 2002 and reading the book free as in freedom (about Richard Stallman) I realized the free as in freedom concept and its advantages. Even today I'm still using non-free software such as Windows and Microsoft Office, but today I understand more about it than 10 years ago. Uri Even-Chen Mobile Phone: +972-50-9007559 E-mail: u...@speedy.net Website: http://www.speedy.net/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
On 10/01/11 10:39, Baruch Siach wrote: See http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il/msg53770.html for some pointers from Marc. Last time I checked, compulab were doing small form factor and cheap PCs, while the original poster asked about sub 50$ devices (ARM). Orange, meet Apple. No relation to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
Hi Erez,
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:08:52AM +0200, Erez D wrote:
I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep
I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf:
http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 )
which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in
size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities)
however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something
smaller and cheaper...
anyone knows of such a hardware ?
See also http://free-electrons.com/community/hardware/boards/ for many
manufacturers and boards. One of the (http://www.glomationinc.com/) sells an
Atmel based board for $49, although it comes with a somewhat dated kernel
(v2.6.25).
baruch
--
~. .~ Tk Open Systems
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Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
There have been some very good ideas in this thread (and I'm collecting them to use on my daughter when she's a little older ;-)), and I just wanted to add my two cents: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Alex Shnitman wrote about Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?: Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care. I agree. But it's not exactly that kids don't care what is illegal and what isn't - (most of) the same 13-year-old kids will not be shoplifting, or stealing from friends, for example - but when kids see that the *norms* are different from the *written laws*, they tend to accept the former (if they even know the latter). When a kid sees all kids around him are copying software, and no adult is doing anything to actively stop it, he learns that it is acceptable. The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has excellently mentioned. Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of people all over the world. That kind of thing talks to kids. The second thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really cool. I think we need to separate between two completely different types of kids - wanabee-programmers, and the rest of the kids. To wanabee-programmers, I'd stress the customizability, possibility to modify everything the program does, learning from other people's code, publishing your version to others, and so on, as well as the community aspects. You can tell them that with Linux they can do on their home computer amazing stuff like run their own servers just like the big companies do. To everyone else, I doubt these will be interesting - I doubt that 80% of the kids in a typical class will even consider looking at source code, or hang around in geeky forums about software. To these kids, I do believe that other issues can be appealing, including freeness (tell them their parents can save 1,000 shekels when buying a new computer by not buying Windows or Office), and, belive it or not, convenience (Linux distributions come with hundreds of software, that on Windows you need to install separately). You can also tell them that X% of the Internet's servers use free software, that their favorite companies like Google, Facebook or whatever use them, and so on. You can tell them that Linux programmers are rarer and make more money in the job market ;-) You can tell them about the possibility of running both Windows and Linux, e.g., using a live CD or a virtual machine (although the latter is pretty complicated). And tell us how it went! Thanks, Nadav. -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat 5771 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Willpower: The ability to eat only one http://nadav.harel.org.il |salted peanut. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
Another thing I just thought of. As has been correctly pointed out, kids this age are nearly always end-users. So why not point out the end user experience of Linux? Lots of eye-candy, stability, not needing to reboot every time you install a program, the simplicity of finding and installing programs (package managers), great runtime on old hardware... In fact, that might be a nice class or group project for them to do, resurrect an old defunct computer and install Linux on it. מחשב לכל ילד is a nice program, but we all know that they lack funds. How cool would it be for this class to have an entire bank of computers that people have thrown out and work perfectly well? Half of the computers in my house are +6 years old and run Linux. Why not the classrooms? On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote: There have been some very good ideas in this thread (and I'm collecting them to use on my daughter when she's a little older ;-)), and I just wanted to add my two cents: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Alex Shnitman wrote about Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?: Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care. I agree. But it's not exactly that kids don't care what is illegal and what isn't - (most of) the same 13-year-old kids will not be shoplifting, or stealing from friends, for example - but when kids see that the *norms* are different from the *written laws*, they tend to accept the former (if they even know the latter). When a kid sees all kids around him are copying software, and no adult is doing anything to actively stop it, he learns that it is acceptable. The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has excellently mentioned. Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of people all over the world. That kind of thing talks to kids. The second thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really cool. I think we need to separate between two completely different types of kids - wanabee-programmers, and the rest of the kids. To wanabee-programmers, I'd stress the customizability, possibility to modify everything the program does, learning from other people's code, publishing your version to others, and so on, as well as the community aspects. You can tell them that with Linux they can do on their home computer amazing stuff like run their own servers just like the big companies do. To everyone else, I doubt these will be interesting - I doubt that 80% of the kids in a typical class will even consider looking at source code, or hang around in geeky forums about software. To these kids, I do believe that other issues can be appealing, including freeness (tell them their parents can save 1,000 shekels when buying a new computer by not buying Windows or Office), and, belive it or not, convenience (Linux distributions come with hundreds of software, that on Windows you need to install separately). You can also tell them that X% of the Internet's servers use free software, that their favorite companies like Google, Facebook or whatever use them, and so on. You can tell them that Linux programmers are rarer and make more money in the job market ;-) You can tell them about the possibility of running both Windows and Linux, e.g., using a live CD or a virtual machine (although the latter is pretty complicated). And tell us how it went! Thanks, Nadav. -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat 5771 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Willpower: The ability to eat only one http://nadav.harel.org.il |salted peanut. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Die GNU autotools
Sorry but I felt compelled to share this book title with you: I saw a book entitled Die GNU Autotools and I thought My feelings exactly. Turns out the book was in German. ref: http://twitter.com/timmartin2/status/23365017839599616 Hope you understand, --Amos ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
Mordecha, That actually sounds like a brilliant idea. Maybe I could ask them to bring all kinds of spare parts of a computer and old computers they might have at home and we could try to put together one ore more new computers and install Linux on it. This project could be spread on several meetings as we might not be able to finish it within 1 hour. I am a bit afraid though that 1) I won't be able to handle the task - after all I have hardly touched any hardware recently 2) What if some of the pieces are not or not well supported by Linux? 3) Would it be interesting in the end to have an old computer? BTW I am most familiar with Ubuntu as I have been using it in the last couple of years but I wonder if it isn't too bloated for old and under-powered computers? Maybe I should try to install DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ? regards Gabor 2011/1/10 Mordecha Behar mordecha.be...@mail.huji.ac.il: Another thing I just thought of. As has been correctly pointed out, kids this age are nearly always end-users. So why not point out the end user experience of Linux? Lots of eye-candy, stability, not needing to reboot every time you install a program, the simplicity of finding and installing programs (package managers), great runtime on old hardware... In fact, that might be a nice class or group project for them to do, resurrect an old defunct computer and install Linux on it. מחשב לכל ילד is a nice program, but we all know that they lack funds. How cool would it be for this class to have an entire bank of computers that people have thrown out and work perfectly well? Half of the computers in my house are +6 years old and run Linux. Why not the classrooms? On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.il wrote: There have been some very good ideas in this thread (and I'm collecting them to use on my daughter when she's a little older ;-)), and I just wanted to add my two cents: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Alex Shnitman wrote about Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?: Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care. I agree. But it's not exactly that kids don't care what is illegal and what isn't - (most of) the same 13-year-old kids will not be shoplifting, or stealing from friends, for example - but when kids see that the *norms* are different from the *written laws*, they tend to accept the former (if they even know the latter). When a kid sees all kids around him are copying software, and no adult is doing anything to actively stop it, he learns that it is acceptable. The first thing I'd stress is customizability, as Mordechay has excellently mentioned. Imagine that you write code that is then used by millions of people all over the world. That kind of thing talks to kids. The second thing is the community aspect: you can enter chat rooms / forums and get help for the software you use. And if you wrote something or became an expert in something, people will come to you for advice. That's really cool. I think we need to separate between two completely different types of kids - wanabee-programmers, and the rest of the kids. To wanabee-programmers, I'd stress the customizability, possibility to modify everything the program does, learning from other people's code, publishing your version to others, and so on, as well as the community aspects. You can tell them that with Linux they can do on their home computer amazing stuff like run their own servers just like the big companies do. To everyone else, I doubt these will be interesting - I doubt that 80% of the kids in a typical class will even consider looking at source code, or hang around in geeky forums about software. To these kids, I do believe that other issues can be appealing, including freeness (tell them their parents can save 1,000 shekels when buying a new computer by not buying Windows or Office), and, belive it or not, convenience (Linux distributions come with hundreds of software, that on Windows you need to install separately). You can also tell them that X% of the Internet's servers use free software, that their favorite companies like Google, Facebook or whatever use them, and so on. You can tell them that Linux programmers are rarer and make more money in the job market ;-) You can tell them about the possibility of running both Windows and Linux, e.g., using a live CD or a virtual machine (although the latter is pretty complicated). And tell us how it went! Thanks, Nadav. -- Nadav Har'El | Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat 5771 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone
Re: Die GNU autotools
LOL. My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git On 01/10/11 12:09, Amos Shapira wrote: Sorry but I felt compelled to share this book title with you: I saw a book entitled Die GNU Autotools and I thought My feelings exactly. Turns out the book was in German. ref: http://twitter.com/timmartin2/status/23365017839599616 Hope you understand, --Amos ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh http://www.total-knowledge.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
haha, good one. anyway, use CMake :) On 01/10/2011 12:09 PM, Amos Shapira wrote: Sorry but I felt compelled to share this book title with you: I saw a book entitled Die GNU Autotools and I thought My feelings exactly. Turns out the book was in German. ref: http://twitter.com/timmartin2/status/23365017839599616 Hope you understand, --Amos ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
13yr old? I'd emphasize that Linux doesn't host spyware either by infection, trojan or the manufacturers. So it's less likely to record your porn browsing habits. (hey it worked for IE8) I might also point out that Windows is what grumpy adults are forced to use in their offices. And the people changing the world over in The Valley, are using Linux. Teens also spend an inordinate amount of time fantasizing that they are special, and that anything they don't have limits. Point out that in Linux they can learn every detail, nuance and control it, and the world will reward them for this. But in Windows, their is a limit they are ALLOWED to learn before working for MS. Sizzle, not the Steak? On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Gabor Szabo szab...@gmail.com wrote: hi, in the school of my son they are interested in getting some 1 hour long presentations from parents about various interesting subject. I could talk hours and days about Linux and Open Source in general but I wonder what do you think. What would be interesting to 13 year old kids? I am not sure free speech is interesting to them and unfortunately they are probably used to that every software is free beer. Given the cheats and cracks. So what do you think? regards Gabor -- Gabor Szabo http://szabgab.com/ ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. - blue_beetle http://www.metafilter.com/user/15556 ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 08:35:36AM +0200, Gabor Szabo wrote: hi, in the school of my son they are interested in getting some 1 hour long presentations from parents about various interesting subject. I could talk hours and days about Linux and Open Source in general but I wonder what do you think. What would be interesting to 13 year old kids? I am not sure free speech is interesting to them and unfortunately they are probably used to that every software is free beer. Given the cheats and cracks. So what do you think? Bring a device or two and demonstrate well, not exactly sure what. Good thing I'm not the one doing the demo :-) -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:49:25PM +0200, Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote: LOL. My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git Does it have anything similar to the autotools 'make distcheck'? -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Shlomi Fish wrote about Re: Die GNU autotools: On Monday 10 Jan 2011 12:49:25 Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote: My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git Well, after a small experimentation with SCons ( http://www.scons.org/ ) which I didn't really like (but is still better than GNU Autohell), I've finally settled on CMake - http://www.cmake.org/ - which is awesome in almost every It saddens me that people bundle Autoconf and Automake under one name autotools, because it causes people to miss that Autoconf *is* the best thing since sliced bread, while the rest of them are, well, not. To appreciate just how great autoconf is, you have to remember what transpired before it was invented in 1991. In the 80s, if you had a C program which was to run on the many variants of Unix that existed then, you'd normally write a complex Makefile with all sorts of parameters, and before a user could compile your program, he would need to edit this Makefile, and turn on or off various flags, fill in locations of various programs, and so on. This was extremely annoying so two solutions were invented: Larry Wall (of Perl fame) invented Metaconfig which would *ask* the user questions instead of asking him to edit a Makefile - this was somewhat easier, but equally annoying and time-consuming. The X-Windows people invented imake, where the user would basically answer all possible questions once (and put them in a system-global config file), and when the user runs xmkmf a Makefile is created from an IMakefile using these defaults. Imake was also not a silver bullet, because it made it impossible for new projects to ask new questions beyond the usual ones that were already answered when X11 was installed. Then (1991) came autoconf, and solved all these problems. It wouldn't ask you silly questions that it could figure out automatically (if some library is available, were is some binary, is some feature of the C compiler available, etc.), and every program could define the specific questions it needed answered, using basic building blocks that autoconf made available. Autoconf was so good, and so much better than anything that was available before, that pretty soon *every* free software came with a configure script. Fast forward 20 years, and autoconf is just as good as it used to be, but most people are starting to forget why it was needed, and only remember its quirkiness, like the fact it uses the bizarre m4 as its base. One reason why people forget how good autoconf is, is that they hardly see different variants of Unix, and the differences between Linux distributions are typically smaller. Another reason for forgetting autoconf's greatness is that normal people don't compile any more! Most Linux users get precompiled binaries from their distributions, and it is the distribution's packagers which do the compilation. Finally, these packagers (who do the compilation) don't really care if the source code used autoconf, or a hand-tweaked Makefile, because they anyway *patch* the source code with all sort of distribution- specific modifications, so they could care less about *patching* the Makefile. This state of affairs is, in my opinion, sad. Once you forget why autoconf is important, it's easy to start believing that all sorts of unrelated tools could somehow replace it. Things like Cmake and Adon-Banai can hardly be considered replacements to Autoconf - perhaps they are better make, perhaps they are imake done again, but not better than autoconf. (note: since I never actually used Cmake or Adon-Banai, I may be missing something, so feel free to correct me). -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat 5771 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A bird in the hand is safer than one http://nadav.harel.org.il |overhead. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 03:09:03PM +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Shlomi Fish wrote about Re: Die GNU autotools: On Monday 10 Jan 2011 12:49:25 Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote: My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git Well, after a small experimentation with SCons ( http://www.scons.org/ ) which I didn't really like (but is still better than GNU Autohell), I've finally settled on CMake - http://www.cmake.org/ - which is awesome in almost every It saddens me that people bundle Autoconf and Automake under one name autotools, because it causes people to miss that Autoconf *is* the best thing since sliced bread, while the rest of them are, well, not. It's not just autoconf and automake. It's also libtool and pkg-config. And some other minor components. [snip] Fast forward 20 years, and autoconf is just as good as it used to be, but most people are starting to forget why it was needed, and only remember its quirkiness, like the fact it uses the bizarre m4 as its base. One reason why people forget how good autoconf is, is that they hardly see different variants of Unix, and the differences between Linux distributions are typically smaller. Enter Debian. Install Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (i386 or amd64) on a virtual machine or a space PC, and get your favorite program to build and run. Note: it's a FreeBSD kernel, but it's GLIBC. http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ This is why Debian proudly calls itself GNU :-) (This is another reason why I keep a MIPS netbook: to force myself thinking portable) Another reason for forgetting autoconf's greatness is that normal people don't compile any more! Most Linux users get precompiled binaries from their distributions, and it is the distribution's packagers which do the compilation. Many others build. They run some sort of build system which eventually calls './configure; make; make install' or something similar. But in a completely transparent manner. Finally, these packagers (who do the compilation) don't really care if the source code used autoconf, or a hand-tweaked Makefile, because they anyway *patch* the source code with all sort of distribution- specific modifications, so they could care less about *patching* the Makefile. This state of affairs is, in my opinion, sad. Packagers do care. Packagers hate hand-crafted makefiles. Once you forget why autoconf is important, it's easy to start believing that all sorts of unrelated tools could somehow replace it. Things like Cmake and Adon-Banai can hardly be considered replacements to Autoconf - perhaps they are better make, perhaps they are imake done again, but not better than autoconf. (note: since I never actually used Cmake or Adon-Banai, I may be missing something, so feel free to correct me). I have never used Adon Banai. I have an educated guess that it is missing many, many features in more mature build systems. CMake has some issues of its own, from what I know, but at least it is more mature. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On 10/01/11 15:09, Nadav Har'El wrote: Things like Cmake and Adon-Banai can hardly be considered replacements to Autoconf - perhaps they are better make, perhaps they are imake done again, but not better than autoconf. I tried, twice, in the past to poke people who were recommending CMake on these points. To date, I have not managed to receive any satisfactory answers. The way I see it, from the somewhat limited research I've done: autoconf: More or less like Nadav put it. A vital tool (with it's should be mandatory friend, autoheader, of course) for cross-platform posix code. Need to use O_NOFOLLOW, but only some platforms have it? Write a tiny test, define O_NOFOLLOW to zero if the test fails, and you're done. No need to check anything in the source code. No #ifdefs. Also, many people who do not like autoconf have simply never heard of autoscan. Automake: I actually use it, and quite like it. It gives a strange but useful balance between the straitjacket that is any makefile generator and does leave some space for actual customization, if you care enough to learn the idiosyncrasies. I do not use it for all my projects, and even when I do use it, I do not always use it for ALL of the project (check out fakeroot-ng for a project that uses automake for some, but not all, of the build process), but where I do use it, I find it does a decent job of it. The main advantage, as far as I'm concerned, is that all it requires from the destination platform is a functioning bourne shell. m4/aclocal - I use it as part of the autoconf generation, but have never bothered to learn it properly. libtool - there's a loaded subject. Yes, I usually use it, but no, I don't think it's a great tool. It has horrible bugs where cross-compiling is concerned (by which point it's not your project that has those bugs, which makes it all the more difficult to solve). It does take some headache away from you, and so I do use it occasionally, but I am not a great fan. If there was an easy way to generate shared libraries with automake without libtool, I would. Then again, about the competition: CMake - as far as I could dig up, it is even more restrictive than automake, require CMake itself to be ported and installed on the compiling platform, and its greatest touted advantage, that it is much simpler to learn than auto*, is irrelevant to me as I already know auto*. In general, I feel much more at home with systems that boil down to a makefile of one sort of another. So, automake, kbuild, and even the horrific thing the Android system uses are better, in my eyes, than something that seeks to reinvent the core build system. Then again, there are one or two things I wish gmake could do (such as path adjusting includes), which would cause me to say I don't need even those, and make do with just autoconf. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On 01/10/11 14:02, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:49:25PM +0200, Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote: LOL. My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git Does it have anything similar to the autotools 'make distcheck'? It does :) -- Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh http://www.total-knowledge.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On 10/01/11 15:53, Shlomi Fish wrote:
SET(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB_LIST)
IF (NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL debug)
IF (NOT FCS_AVOID_TCMALLOC)
# Optionally link against Google's TCMalloc if it's available:
# http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/
# This gives better performance for the threaded programs.
FIND_LIBRARY(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB tcmalloc)
IF(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB STREQUAL LIBTCMALLOC_LIB-NOTFOUND)
# Do nothing.
ELSE(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB STREQUAL LIBTCMALLOC_LIB-NOTFOUND)
# Cancelling for now to see if it helps with the valgrind problem.
# TODO : restore
SET(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB_LIST ${LIBTCMALLOC_LIB})
ENDIF(LIBTCMALLOC_LIB STREQUAL LIBTCMALLOC_LIB-NOTFOUND)
ENDIF (NOT FCS_AVOID_TCMALLOC)
ENDIF (NOT CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL debug)
You have certainly made me take back one claim I have made. CMake is not
easier to learn, nor is the result more readable.
FIND_LIBRARY has an equivalent in Autotools-land, and CMake can do all that.
The question was not about functionality in CMake for which an
equivalent autoconf functionality exists. The question was about the
other way around.
From your page:
CMake, on the other hand uses a custom syntax, which is consistent,
trustworthy, predictable and reliable. The fact that it isn't
standard does not make it bad.
Both M4 and bourne shell are Turing complete languages. Is CMake? If
not, it is likely that not all conceivable tests can be written in it.
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com
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Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
1) Most hardware elements are pretty idiot-proof. There's only one way to plug them in, and only one place they can go. But you can skip this step if you want. A lot of people buy new computers even when their old one isn't exactly broken, it's just not up to spec. People want faster, more powerful computers, and they tend to throw away slower, weaker ones. Ask around, I'm sure' you'll be able to turn up a computer in good condition that is simple too slow. Once Linux is installed on it, that won't be a problem anymore. 2) You could pick a distribution that has very good hardware support for most of the standard components. Ubuntu and Mandriva are two that spring to mind. 3) Yes, it would be interesting. For the simple reason that they now have a computer (or several) in their classroom that they can use. Furthermore, there is the coolness factor. They took an old decrepit computer and turned it into something useful, and rather powerful. All thanks to FOSS. As to Ubuntu, I had a Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM that was running Ubuntu for years. It recently died from simple wear and tear on the physical components. It worked very well, faster even than my XP computer. Of course it had a very old video card, and that prevented us from updating past kernel 2.6.19, but still, it worked very well. We just didn't update the kernel, or if it did update automatically we reset the boot kernel in GRUB. (Actually in /boot/grub/menu.lst) I think the last version of Ubuntu that ran well on it was Karmic. DSL is fine for other things (picture viewers, dedicated internet stations...), but for a classroom computer you're going to want something with more oomph (not to mention it should look nice). If you can get a hold of a computer made in the last 3 years I don't think there's any reason not to install the most cutting edge Linux of your choice on it. Of course you should remember that you're supposed to be giving a talk :P. From my experience an Ubuntu install takes around half an hour. So if you bring the computer and the Live USB with you and install it before their eyes, that'll give you half an hour to talk about Linux in general, and half an hour to show them how to use Ubuntu. On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Gabor Szabo szab...@gmail.com wrote: Mordecha, That actually sounds like a brilliant idea. Maybe I could ask them to bring all kinds of spare parts of a computer and old computers they might have at home and we could try to put together one ore more new computers and install Linux on it. This project could be spread on several meetings as we might not be able to finish it within 1 hour. I am a bit afraid though that 1) I won't be able to handle the task - after all I have hardly touched any hardware recently 2) What if some of the pieces are not or not well supported by Linux? 3) Would it be interesting in the end to have an old computer? BTW I am most familiar with Ubuntu as I have been using it in the last couple of years but I wonder if it isn't too bloated for old and under-powered computers? Maybe I should try to install DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ ? regards Gabor 2011/1/10 Mordecha Behar mordecha.be...@mail.huji.ac.il: Another thing I just thought of. As has been correctly pointed out, kids this age are nearly always end-users. So why not point out the end user experience of Linux? Lots of eye-candy, stability, not needing to reboot every time you install a program, the simplicity of finding and installing programs (package managers), great runtime on old hardware... In fact, that might be a nice class or group project for them to do, resurrect an old defunct computer and install Linux on it. מחשב לכל ילד is a nice program, but we all know that they lack funds. How cool would it be for this class to have an entire bank of computers that people have thrown out and work perfectly well? Half of the computers in my house are +6 years old and run Linux. Why not the classrooms? On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.il wrote: There have been some very good ideas in this thread (and I'm collecting them to use on my daughter when she's a little older ;-)), and I just wanted to add my two cents: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Alex Shnitman wrote about Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?: Come on, guys, kids don't give a rat's ass about what's legal and what isn't. Even many adults don't. Those arguments may work in corporations, but certainly not in a school. Same thing about vendor lock-in: you're talking in adult terms here, they know nothing about it and they don't care. I agree. But it's not exactly that kids don't care what is illegal and what isn't - (most of) the same 13-year-old kids will not be shoplifting, or stealing from friends, for example - but when kids see that the *norms* are different from the *written laws*, they
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
On Monday 10 January 2011 13:44:11 Justin wrote: 13yr old? I'd emphasize that Linux doesn't host spyware either by infection, trojan or the manufacturers. So it's less likely to record your porn browsing habits. (hey it worked for IE8) I might also point out that Windows is what grumpy adults are forced to use in their offices. And the people changing the world over in The Valley, are using Linux. Teens also spend an inordinate amount of time fantasizing that they are special, and that anything they don't have limits. Point out that in Linux they can learn every detail, nuance and control it, and the world will reward them for this. But in Windows, their is a limit they are ALLOWED to learn before working for MS. Sizzle, not the Steak? On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Gabor Szabo szab...@gmail.com wrote: Justin has hit on the most powerful point, i.e. being different from adults like their fuddy-duddy parents. Hey, kids! Be the first on your block to have a good reason to talk down to your old man! It's irresistable. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: What to tell 13 year old kids about Linux and Open Source?
Oddly enough this reminds me of one of my favorite comics: http://xkcd.com/456/ Justin has hit on the most powerful point, i.e. being different from adults like their fuddy-duddy parents. Hey, kids! Be the first on your block to have a good reason to talk down to your old man! It's irresistable. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
You gave a very good history lesson about the need and reasons for autotools. The thing is, many of the software written now, is not intended to run on HP-UX framework. I'm not a Unix expert, but maybe modern unices are more POSIX compliant than in the past. So I think developers prefer to write a more strictly POSIX compliant application, and to need a simpler building process and have a single set of source files, than to use non-portable functions and to be forced to use autotools. For example, I'd rather implement hton* myself, then checking for this function's existence with autotools. A good example for such a project is http://re2.googlecode.com It uses plain makefile, supports a few unices, and is fairly complex. On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.ilwrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011, Shlomi Fish wrote about Re: Die GNU autotools: On Monday 10 Jan 2011 12:49:25 Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote: My feelings too. A while ago I got so tired of autotools that I even started working on my own build system intended as a semi-drop-in replacement. It's purely make-based. If interested, take a look at the sources http://sources.total-knowledge.com/gitweb/?p=adon-banai.git Well, after a small experimentation with SCons ( http://www.scons.org/ ) which I didn't really like (but is still better than GNU Autohell), I've finally settled on CMake - http://www.cmake.org/ - which is awesome in almost every It saddens me that people bundle Autoconf and Automake under one name autotools, because it causes people to miss that Autoconf *is* the best thing since sliced bread, while the rest of them are, well, not. To appreciate just how great autoconf is, you have to remember what transpired before it was invented in 1991. In the 80s, if you had a C program which was to run on the many variants of Unix that existed then, you'd normally write a complex Makefile with all sorts of parameters, and before a user could compile your program, he would need to edit this Makefile, and turn on or off various flags, fill in locations of various programs, and so on. This was extremely annoying so two solutions were invented: Larry Wall (of Perl fame) invented Metaconfig which would *ask* the user questions instead of asking him to edit a Makefile - this was somewhat easier, but equally annoying and time-consuming. The X-Windows people invented imake, where the user would basically answer all possible questions once (and put them in a system-global config file), and when the user runs xmkmf a Makefile is created from an IMakefile using these defaults. Imake was also not a silver bullet, because it made it impossible for new projects to ask new questions beyond the usual ones that were already answered when X11 was installed. Then (1991) came autoconf, and solved all these problems. It wouldn't ask you silly questions that it could figure out automatically (if some library is available, were is some binary, is some feature of the C compiler available, etc.), and every program could define the specific questions it needed answered, using basic building blocks that autoconf made available. Autoconf was so good, and so much better than anything that was available before, that pretty soon *every* free software came with a configure script. Fast forward 20 years, and autoconf is just as good as it used to be, but most people are starting to forget why it was needed, and only remember its quirkiness, like the fact it uses the bizarre m4 as its base. One reason why people forget how good autoconf is, is that they hardly see different variants of Unix, and the differences between Linux distributions are typically smaller. Another reason for forgetting autoconf's greatness is that normal people don't compile any more! Most Linux users get precompiled binaries from their distributions, and it is the distribution's packagers which do the compilation. Finally, these packagers (who do the compilation) don't really care if the source code used autoconf, or a hand-tweaked Makefile, because they anyway *patch* the source code with all sort of distribution- specific modifications, so they could care less about *patching* the Makefile. This state of affairs is, in my opinion, sad. Once you forget why autoconf is important, it's easy to start believing that all sorts of unrelated tools could somehow replace it. Things like Cmake and Adon-Banai can hardly be considered replacements to Autoconf - perhaps they are better make, perhaps they are imake done again, but not better than autoconf. (note: since I never actually used Cmake or Adon-Banai, I may be missing something, so feel free to correct me). -- Nadav Har'El| Monday, Jan 10 2011, 5 Shevat 5771 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A bird in the hand is safer than one
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 09:02:15PM +0200, Elazar Leibovich wrote: You gave a very good history lesson about the need and reasons for autotools. The thing is, many of the software written now, is not intended to run on HP-UX framework. I'm not a Unix expert, but maybe modern unices are more POSIX compliant than in the past. So I think developers prefer to write a more strictly POSIX compliant application, and to need a simpler building process and have a single set of source files, than to use non-portable functions and to be forced to use autotools. For example, I'd rather implement hton* myself, then checking for this function's existence with autotools. A good example for such a project is http://re2.googlecode.com It uses plain makefile, supports a few unices, and is fairly complex. Nice. 'make distclean; make' fails there. I had to see in the makefile I need to enable something that requires internet access. Now that's distro-friendly. Looking at the makefile I noticed you use there 'ifeq ($(shell uname),Darwin)' What if I want to cross-build? Do I have to override 'uname' in the PATH? In fact, the C++ compiler is g++ explicitly in some parts. Though you define on the top CC=g++ (HUH? CC? Not CXX or CCC?) . But then again, you use it to compile .c files as well. Yeah. You have your own hand-crafted Makefiles. With the only special-case of Darwin. No need to be portable. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
2011/1/10 Erez D erez0...@gmail.com I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf: http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 ) which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities) however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something smaller and cheaper... anyone knows of such a hardware ? thanks, erez. Have you looked into Gumstix? http://www.gumstix.com/ -Mike ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Tzafrir Cohen tzaf...@cohens.org.ilwrote: [snipped] Yeah. You have your own hand-crafted Makefiles. With the only special-case of Darwin. No need to be portable. All your issues are valid from purity POV. Indeed in some rare cases compiling C files with g++, when cross compiling from Mac OS X to other platform (wow, when would that happen?), you'll have to edit a single, easy to understand line in the top of the makefile, and make distclean doesn't make sense really, it should be dropped altogether (care to issue a bug report?). But then again, this software is usable today on many platforms, and it makes life easier maintainance-wise for 99.9% of the use cases, and using it in a special way is possible without too much hassle. Let's compare the situation there with the situation of VLC which uses autotools. I had once the doubted pleasure of cross-compiling version 0.86 of VLC to windows on Linux (as recommended by the docs) with a modern distribution software today. As expected this beast didn't compile even though I had the very same version of gcc and the exact binary libraries required by 0.86. What happened is that for some reason (maybe the autotools version wasn't 100% the same of the autotools version they originally used to build 0.86, or I don't know what) the autogenerated libtool script was broken, reading it and editing the m4 file which generated it was a very difficult job. So I ended up reimplementing libtool with python. So yes, you'll have errors even with autotools, but I'd rather debug the errors of a hand written readable Makefile than the errors of autotools script. (BTW m4 and bash are indeed Turing complete, but they make great job obfuscating your Turing machine ;-) ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:22:46PM +0200, Elazar Leibovich wrote: On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Tzafrir Cohen tzaf...@cohens.org.ilwrote: [snipped] Yeah. You have your own hand-crafted Makefiles. With the only special-case of Darwin. No need to be portable. All your issues are valid from purity POV. Indeed in some rare cases compiling C files with g++, when cross compiling from Mac OS X to other platform (wow, when would that happen?), you'll have to edit a single, easy to understand line in the top of the makefile, and make distclean doesn't make sense really, it should be dropped altogether (care to issue a bug report?). Too lazy, sorry. (The bad thing is that in some places you use 'g++' directly, regardless of what is defined in CC. Not to mention some environments would override CC with some other cc) But then again, this software is usable today on many platforms, and it makes life easier maintainance-wise for 99.9% of the use cases, and using it in a special way is possible without too much hassle. Let's compare the situation there with the situation of VLC which uses autotools. And has tons of other dependencies: Build dependecies: http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/vlc http://packages.debian.org/source/experimental/re2 VLC has many media types to support. Many features are optional. Many features depend on the libraries available. Some features could be provided by more than one library. I could go and rewrite re2's build system in autotools. It wouldn't be a problem. Now you go and rewite VLC in plain makefiles. I had once the doubted pleasure of cross-compiling version 0.86 of VLC to windows on Linux (as recommended by the docs) with a modern distribution software today. Who needs to cross-compile to Windows on Linux? That's a crasy thing. As expected this beast didn't compile even though I had the very same version of gcc and the exact binary libraries required by 0.86. What happened is that for some reason (maybe the autotools version wasn't 100% the same of the autotools version they originally used to build 0.86, or I don't know what) the autogenerated libtool script was broken, reading it and editing the m4 file which generated it was a very difficult job. So I ended up reimplementing libtool with python. So yes, you'll have errors even with autotools, but I'd rather debug the errors of a hand written readable Makefile than the errors of autotools script. (BTW m4 and bash are indeed Turing complete, but they make great job obfuscating your Turing machine ;-) Sounds like you never got to write code for a real Turing machine. :-) -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il || a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il || best tzaf...@debian.org|| friend ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Tzafrir Cohen tzaf...@cohens.org.ilwrote: (The bad thing is that in some places you use 'g++' directly, regardless of what is defined in CC. Not to mention some environments would override CC with some other cc) Indeed this is an error. Happens in four places only though, and trivial to fix. Anyhow if you'll compile with something other than g++ you'll have other problems, so it's safe to assume nowadays that users would only compile it with g++. Remember, I want life easier for 99.9% of the users. The users of icc will need to test it anyhow, so this little toil is not the most difficult task they'll have to do. And has tons of other dependencies: Just wanted to make 100% clear that the problem wasn't related in any way to the dependencies of VLC. I downloaded the binary dependencies provided by the docs, and they worked correctly. The only problem was with libtool bash script autogenerated by the autotools. Who needs to cross-compile to Windows on Linux? That's a crasy thing. This actually makes sense, since the support of the GNU tools in windows is not as good as with windows so requiring the users of gcc to use Linux for compiling does make sense. Doing that from Mac makes less sense, and doesn't worth maintaining, so I care much less about this cases. The overall price paid for not using autotools versus the gain of greatly simplifying the build process, is IMHO definitely worth it. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: Die GNU autotools
On 10/01/11 23:22, Elazar Leibovich wrote: But then again, this software is usable today on many platforms, and it makes life easier maintainance-wise for 99.9% of the use cases, and using it in a special way is possible without too much hassle. Let's compare the situation there with the situation of VLC which uses autotools. Sure, it makes total sense to compare a software that is 93 files, about 36,000 lines of code (including tests) and no documented dependencies to VLC, 1340 source files, 590,000 lines of code and tons of understandable dependencies due to external codecs and stuff. I can see how, except for the choice of build system, the two are on par. The fact of the matter is that, had we chosen auto* for re2, the build would be trivially small. I'm guessing it would be on par of running autoscan, and then doing 5 minutes of editing on the resulting configure script. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: small linux hardware
Gumstix are quite expensive comparatively. ---MAV Marc. Volovic +972-54-467-6764 marcvolo...@me.com Sent from my iPhone On Jan 10, 2011, at 23:05, Michael Tewner tew...@gmail.com wrote: 2011/1/10 Erez D erez0...@gmail.com I am looking for a linux hardware which would be small, low power and cheep I found the telit GE863-PRO (pdf: http://www.telit.com/module/infopool/download.php?id=725 ) which is actually a gprs module + linux on arm9. it is 41.4x31.4x3.6 mm in size and i can get it in 50$ (in quantities) however as i do not need the gprs module, i thought i could find something smaller and cheaper... anyone knows of such a hardware ? thanks, erez. Have you looked into Gumstix? http://www.gumstix.com/ -Mike ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
