Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Dan Kegel
Oh, absolutely, python is a nonstarter for an autotools replacement. Autotools is/was great because it worked everywhere, even during early bootstrap where all you have is shell, basic shell utilities, and a C compiler. Python doesn't, and never will. The C ports of meson and ninja could potentia

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Mike Frysinger
On 15 Feb 2022 20:25, Jacob Bachmeyer wrote: > Dan Kegel wrote: > > Meson is a candidate for such a next-gen config system. It is in python, > > which does not quite qualify as usable during early uplift/bootstrap, but > > there are C ports in progress, see e.g. https://sr.ht/~lattis/muon/ > > *P

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Mike Frysinger
On 15 Feb 2022 08:29, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > A problem with xargs is that without using the GNU -O or --null > argument and null-terminated arguments, file names containing spaces > won't be handled properly. File names containing spaces is an issue > for Autotools in general. This is again

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread NightStrike
On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 6:01 PM Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > The people who tell me it is more portable are very interested in > targeting Microsoft Windows. Introduce them to mingw-w64.sf.net + msys2 :) I heard good things about those :P > The "Makefiles" that Cmake generates are self-referential

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Jacob Bachmeyer
Dan Kegel wrote: Meson is a candidate for such a next-gen config system. It is in python, which does not quite qualify as usable during early uplift/bootstrap, but there are C ports in progress, see e.g. https://sr.ht/~lattis/muon/ *Please* do not introduce a dependency on Python; they do n

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Paul Smith
On Tue, 2022-02-15 at 16:59 -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > The people who tell me it is more portable are very interested in > targeting Microsoft Windows. Unsurprising :). Just to be clear, cmake can't/won't help you write programs that are portable to Windows. If you are targeting the W32 sy

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Tue, 15 Feb 2022, Paul Smith wrote: On Tue, 2022-02-15 at 15:37 -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: I have been told by several people (who have much more self-esteem than me) that a build tool called 'cmake' is far more portable than Autotools so maybe we should make support for 32 year old syste

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Paul Smith
On Tue, 2022-02-15 at 15:37 -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > I have been told by several people (who have much more self-esteem > than me) that a build tool called 'cmake' is far more portable than > Autotools so maybe we should make support for 32 year old systems > cmake's responsibility? That

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
It it really expected that Autotools should support 32 year old systems? This feels counter-productive to me. I have been told by several people (who have much more self-esteem than me) that a build tool called 'cmake' is far more portable than Autotools so maybe we should make support for 32

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Nick Bowler
On 2022-02-14, Mike Frysinger wrote: > context: https://bugs.gnu.org/53340 > > how portable is xargs ? like, beyond POSIX, as autoconf & automake both > support non-POSIX compliant systems. i want to use it in its simplest > form: `echo $var | xargs rm -f`. As far as I can tell xargs was introd

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Roman Neuhauser
# egg...@cs.ucla.edu / 2022-02-14 19:53:17 -0800: > On 2/14/22 19:45, Mike Frysinger wrote: > > how portable is xargs ? > > It can be a porting problem, unfortunately. There are several corner > cases that various implementations don't get right. I expect this is why > the GNU Coding Standards e

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Alex Ameen
If the goal is to limit command line length while maintaining or increasing the number of files passed to various compilation tools, it may be worth writing object lists to files to be passed as command scripts - in cases where the tool supports it. Obviously whether the majority of tools support c

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Mon, 14 Feb 2022, Mike Frysinger wrote: On 14 Feb 2022 19:53, Paul Eggert wrote: On 2/14/22 19:45, Mike Frysinger wrote: how portable is xargs ? It can be a porting problem, unfortunately. There are several corner cases that various implementations don't get right. I expect this is why th

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-15 Thread Daniel Herring
On Tue, 15 Feb 2022, Jan Engelhardt wrote: On Tuesday 2022-02-15 07:16, Daniel Herring wrote: Maybe a next-generation configuration tool should start by defining interfaces for user interactions and build tools. This would allow CLI and easy GUI and IDE users, integration with multiple build

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Jan Engelhardt
On Tuesday 2022-02-15 07:16, Daniel Herring wrote: > > Maybe a next-generation configuration tool should start by defining interfaces > for user interactions and build tools. This would allow CLI and easy GUI and > IDE users, integration with multiple build systems, static and dynamic > probing

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Dan Kegel
Meson is a candidate for such a next-gen config system. It is in python, which does not quite qualify as usable during early uplift/bootstrap, but there are C ports in progress, see e.g. https://sr.ht/~lattis/muon/ In the meantime, I agree that find is more portable than cards ;-) - Dan Daniel

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Daniel Herring
Hi Mike, It often makes sense to change a project that uses Autotools rather than modifying the Autotools. Can this argument-splitting behavior be documented as expected? Are no workarounds available? Replacing "overly fancy but proven shell script" with "dependency on a new tool" may repl

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Paul Eggert
On 2/14/22 20:03, Mike Frysinger wrote: are the corner cases known ? I don't know of a catalog, no. These days you might have better luck with "find ... -exec ... {} +". Although standardized more recently than xargs, my vague impression is that there's less variation among implementations.

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Mike Frysinger
On 14 Feb 2022 19:53, Paul Eggert wrote: > On 2/14/22 19:45, Mike Frysinger wrote: > > how portable is xargs ? > > It can be a porting problem, unfortunately. There are several corner > cases that various implementations don't get right. I expect this is why > the GNU Coding Standards exclude xa

Re: portability of xargs

2022-02-14 Thread Paul Eggert
On 2/14/22 19:45, Mike Frysinger wrote: how portable is xargs ? It can be a porting problem, unfortunately. There are several corner cases that various implementations don't get right. I expect this is why the GNU Coding Standards exclude xargs from the list of programs that 'configure' and