From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <9ddc336b5437f42b2ca0bef18c45ad3d@vitanuova.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] new compilers
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:31:34 +0100
From: rog@vitanuova.com
In-Reply-To: <1388b3a83891b000d624805b51308b94@plan9.bell-labs.com>
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> I find the notion of pre-compiled headers for anything other than
> a very special situation rather odd.

it is odd.  i've just been playing with trying to get some stuff
working under macos x, and the interfaces are just amazing.  the
standard approach seems to be to enumerate every possible situation
(often literally, with enums) in the interface.  a few days ago i did
a little test, just to appreciate the full extent of things.  cpp of a
null source file (with only the #includes i needed) gave over 100,000
lines of code.  there were at least 20,000 enum constants defined,
with names such as kAudioHardwarePropertyBootChimeVolumeRangeDecibels,
and kAudioFormatProperty_AvailableEncodeChannelLayoutTags.

and the interfaces that are presented are almost unusable even if you
take that on board.  i've been looking at the audio interfaces;
functionality provided by the system includes facilities to read mp3
files, do sample-rate conversion, and produce sound output, so i
thought, as a first test, i'd try to play an mp3 file.  i haven't
succeeded yet.

after struggling for a good while, i found some example code that does
this.  it's over 1000 lines of code.  when it should be about 10.  i'd
think perhaps it was deliberate, if it didn't all seem so carefully
done, with loving attention given to every misbegotten line of header
file.

as charles put it recently, with relation to usb: ``enough is
specified to make it complicated, but not enough to be complete, once
for all.'' so true.

given that kind of programming environment, the decision to use
precompiled headers becomes slightly more understandable, i suppose.

i guess the only good thing is that by using interfaces like that, they'll
be wasting countless man-hours of programmer time, potentially
allowing those using smaller, smarter interfaces a competitive advantage.
yeah right.