autotools be like

checking for number system base ... base 2
checking for signed integer system ... twos complement
checking for galaxy ... milky way
checking for laws of the universe ... standard model

@unnick VAX/VMS 3.0 only had partial support for thermodynamic entropy. Best not to make assumptions and just keep the extra test around.

@unnick hmm is there an @autotools@botsin.space? if not there should be

@unnick checking for FORTRAN77 compiler

I'm just building a GTK color picker in C, why do you need this?!?

@unnick checking for byte size … 8 bits

@unnick
Would be a cool Sci Fi setting to consider an autotools or other build tools that have to check for the universe. Oh snap, this binary was compiled for the wrong universe

@unnick jokes on you, software using autotools is the only kind that will keep working after false vacuum decay destroys the laws of physics

@wyatt8740 @unnick Because someone c&p'd a bunch of garbage rather than writing their own .ac file... 🤦

@nytpu @unnick but only after manual patching of megabytes of autogenerated shell code

@charlotte autotools' pile of shell and m4 already doesn't follow the current laws of physics, I'm sure it doesn't have to follow any other models either :P

@unnick

@nytpu @unnick i mean i have personally had to patch autotools code in order to support a very obsscure target called arm64

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @unnick Because the whole thing is fairly opaque, uses an obscure language, and the docs on how to make decent use of it are unofficial and hard to find especially after the burning of search...

No intent to blame anyone just theorize on how things got this way.

@whitequark @dalias @wyatt8740 @unnick
Good question. Writing one for yourself really isn't difficult. Yes, you do need to take a look through the documentation, but apparently cut and paste is less effort.

@whitequark @jannem @dalias @wyatt8740 @unnick can confirm, i still can't figure out why it sometimes decides it's cross compiling even when the host and target are both explicitly defined as the same thing, and just... refuses to consider otherwise. it's also a pain in the ass when you have to go hunting through a ./configure script to see why something failed, because not all of them drop a log, and the env vars needed to declare stuff explicitly aren't universal outside of some parts of GCC.

i still prefer it over cmake, because cmake is fucking huge and doesn't like to find libs on non-linux hosts (or linux hosts mid-buildroot-make) and doesn't like non-linux targets very much, etc etc

@parzivalwolfram @whitequark @jannem @dalias @unnick Yes, I also prefer autotools/autoconf 100% for almost everything.

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick
If your windows program requires visual studio I will fucking build it for webassembly instead and ship it like that

I genuinely prefer MSYS/mingw

@wyatt8740 @whitequark @jannem @dalias @unnick yeah i've never had a good experience with VS, even VSC, or even VC/VC++ lol, though i also have constant issues with C#/.NET programs and anything adjacent to it but people online tend to tell me it's somehow user error if a .NET program spits out nonsensical, never-before-seen error messages then just die. i only write in python on windows just to avoid all of those headaches.

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick Your opinions are frankly wrong.
Windows is not for competent people

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick fork is quite annoying, i agree
But bash isn't the POSIX C API. You don't have to write fork()'s to use a shell script

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @jannem @dalias @unnick Bash extensions can be very helpful, but it is big and sometimes critically buggy, I do agree on those common points.

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick Powershell is worse

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick it's been around since windows xp. I'm astonished if you never have

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @jannem @dalias @unnick question: what if csh from 1989 is the only scripting language available to you, and there's no compilers available on a target system except K&R as? i'm working on a project where this is the entire issue, and it's... not fun. this is the precise case where that "consider using bash to build GCC because some cases in other shells make the ./configure script take literal days" warning actually happens lol

@parzivalwolfram @whitequark @jannem @dalias @unnick i was about to mention csh, actually. Lol.

There are so many things worse than a bourne shell
Bourne shell is the only way i can comfortably survive in a windows environment

@whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick gotta say i kind of wondered when you said 'only thing worse is cmd.exe'
Because that means you never used DOS

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @jannem @dalias @unnick i've done some DOS slinging, it's even worse without the extensions from the NT era. splitting a string is a 3-batch-file job totalling... 2104 bytes, for a maximum of 3 splits on one character, more if you need more than that, and there's no way to do it programmatically up to n splits unless you hardcode support up to that number.

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @parzivalwolfram @jannem @unnick Not bash just a POSIX shell, which only needs fork if you're bad at implementing it and code like it's 1970... 😁

@whitequark @jannem @dalias @wyatt8740 @unnick cmake is good in theory, but in practice it needs an infinite number of beatings over the head to make it work in any slightly non-standard configuration, and it's so big that it's almost worthless if you need backwards-compatibility (or if you're stupid like me and need it to run on Solaris 7 or a 3DS or some shit like that...) Most people won't use it in these configurations, because... why would they? but it's an issue for me, and i reserve the right to not like a tool that can't be bent to fit a weird situation even a little bit lol

@parzivalwolfram @whitequark @jannem @wyatt8740 @unnick cmake is just an awful user facing interface. No consistency in how you override what tools to use, where to find libraries, what flags to build with, where to install, how to do a staged install, etc. NTM the horrible DSL and gigantic implementation that takes like an hour ti build.

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick I'm in a project using cmake and I don't like it. (I prototyped a replacement of our build stuff in omake in finite time...) But definitely less bad than autohell.

@project1enigma @whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick I'm a fan of writing a makefile and telling people to figure it out.

Sure, it pissed me off when i started, but once I figured out how makefiles work I appreciated them a lot more

@wyatt8740 @whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick make has its limitations especially in really big multi directory source trees like ours. omake is enough make like, but with multi directory stuff just working really correctly. And fast. That's why I used that for my prototype alternative build.

@wyatt8740 @whitequark @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick Long ago we did have a gmake based build by yours truly in fact.

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @project1enigma @jannem @dalias @unnick i don't mind projects with makefiles that are like 30 lines at most, where it's just a shell script but it's kept around for build systems and such. when it's a 30KB file full of high-level shell wizardry... i just have to hope i don't have to dig through it and that it just works.

@whitequark @project1enigma @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick Wow, so humble.

@wyatt8740@tech.lgbt

Sis
You both implied the same thing and diverged around "but what about other people"

@whitequark @project1enigma @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick where was I a prick who said that I was better at programming than you?

@whitequark @project1enigma @parzivalwolfram @jannem @dalias @unnick The first link is clearly not me saying "i'm a better programmer." I am saying that I appreciate the simplicity of a makefile compared to dealing with cmake

As for the second, i said that because YOU implied I was incompetent for liking bourne shells. Jerk. Blocking now.

@whitequark @wyatt8740 @project1enigma @jannem @dalias @unnick cmake is still an eighties-quality tool, it can't handle being used in buildroot 90% of the time without manual intervention and the nightlies need cmake to build cmake, so that's gonna be fun to look forward to later considering that got pkg-config (or whatever it was, i forget the name) replaced with a rewritten tool by most distros pretty fast.

@unnick "No 1 (one) key detected, using L (ell) instead"

@th @unnick Computer manuals used to have a paragraph or two in the instructions reminding users to use the dedicated zero and one keys rather than O (OH) and l (ell).
I would look up an example, but the Internet Archive is down.

@th @unnick The Archive is back up, so here's my favorite example, from the manual for the Jupiter Ace (a failed British microcomputer that ran Forth instead of BASIC).
If you're not familiar with old microcomputers, the mentioned "television" is the standard television you would plug the computer into. Monitors are expensive and $200 was all the home market could support, so most micros of the '80s shipped with a composite output rather than a monitor.

@th
I scrolled all the way through this thread to make sure someone posted that... and then remembered that perl's configure wasn't actually autotools, but a special snowflake of it's own. It committed similar crimes, but for somewhat different reasons...
@unnick

@curtmack @unnick while most of the home micros used slashed-zero, there are some older display terminals had slashed-oh.