From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.6 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,HTML_MESSAGE,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [50.116.15.146]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 164F822373 for ; Thu, 20 Jun 2024 22:35:13 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC8AE43C4C; Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:35:07 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mout.perfora.net (mout.perfora.net [74.208.4.197]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9D30043C4B for ; Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:35:00 +1000 (AEST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=makerlisp.com; s=s1-ionos; t=1718915699; x=1719520499; i=luther.johnson@makerlisp.com; bh=MBQXAU8oBU8j8Ig+R8xL/2lvDfubjiHe0UolEfgqkss=; h=X-UI-Sender-Class:Subject:To:References:From:Message-ID:Date: MIME-Version:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:cc: content-transfer-encoding:content-type:date:from:message-id: mime-version:reply-to:subject:to; b=pLGgn3+2xxGLieZHHvmMIm5/UBuBcIxT4vpb98eRy21lDghqaJjBG8+o6RXsR4gs Gl1q9XHnJ5xPEB7+p0aGPpOUT5v7R7II7rX3RIfh6x7QtYjdOaPnIVdlGFujJhtUS TIzvjpAAux1SoPAu/nbR9cFZBgB15MIA6LIJeWFEj8clVZliZzw6FVy/JdxTNddVD QqbhJ6BNWBT2xUDzXiwx8Hw9elOM3ZKzNSeT4Pz8ApiyQX4irxq7F9s22zrHQFiV3 54K9Dr4sA97J3mv2aIcV9VuPcwx8zRvOm0eEdt/EPcrQ0TBWYP9r8TyKbRiyiXlVZ MsQNdk5p6aI9bqHh5g== X-UI-Sender-Class: 55c96926-9e95-11ee-ae09-1f7a4046a0f6 Received: from makerlispvps ([74.208.29.250]) by mrelay.perfora.net (mreueus003 [74.208.5.2]) with ESMTPSA (Nemesis) id 0LaEqu-1smLmf1h4I-00iMBr for ; Thu, 20 Jun 2024 22:34:59 +0200 Received: from [192.168.234.136] (unknown [172.56.208.247]) by makerlispvps (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B2DF68C24D for ; Thu, 20 Jun 2024 20:34:58 +0000 (UTC) To: tuhs@tuhs.org References: <87iky84c23.fsf@gmail.com> <20240617012531.GE12821@mcvoy.com> <0e6792ed-65b0-e2e1-8159-6426a7f15a8d@riddermarkfarm.ca> <202406200501.45K5118a028500@sdf.org> From: Luther Johnson Message-ID: <2a834aef-2b52-6b16-b79a-7f321585a4b8@makerlisp.com> Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:34:56 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------005040DC192C584E26CD8FD1" X-Provags-ID: V03:K1:yI5Tv7iw/sOamTZYjr2aB8o2g2qQxaB+n7mCjp/663Ah9bbmtyl fZoQL/C5sQV01mB0NPCJoQuLdJ3a1CDRncEvtTOmnYKzGwxKx/v81Cxu3hZ6FEbfH+xn3rb 6NUG4DZLpmXV31E1FvqXjVwGa/l7oqg2KNobyQUT1cag7t5xY+tR8xP58SduprtVoMcLe33 Jeya4jYgnr0JbRAJwyXpA== UI-OutboundReport: notjunk:1;M01:P0:URS2wEWGg1E=;GhzAuwtPtm7+azLO/mdQmedHb/U oQtkNPvCtF2PXQSVa7cr7mlno5LVCsB53p7LJ0e+E26K+TnTwSXN8rSn/bdVkQeXOLlXXi3wt 3CaF2pVA1wzdwMBNcQjPJ+goVIXJhmSuOtkeiH16SwChuYEMGCTW1Pnb1HEAm9XFu65jW/TQK rvc15TtITmT/i8JkuUuz0Q12zysMu1qS7eAoMiF9Clac7Gdq0cRCZoGPtDo0k1vAeJ/yyxjXQ NfNMYdgsZoE9VXbqpZY/u2s2cM/Lj6uVV6aMGre4N0Q3k8ytD8fGcPxQtj/yIe2lbGk3hc0PZ YbRdwvk8njQ6wrBrW58mZruy+trhcj7Z/CO1oZ5X1Qu6d7mzR/ruKJ6q7BdNgroyzTm8oAo53 KOXnZdGPNA5o72s8Eg6Qedqhb8NNZaWEki5VhXP4qHdooQNzCEsGHSmBXrnaKRzOs0Ol1BFi/ bJhWBMsa1xr/Gl6cEJpP4pno4X2SaISPsp4mOgDo7xeBsq/9KYgohFPfEYqUj9a/QZPHMcQ2/ mFrIxt/5iNWYG16ja/RNboTujypn1SzRQih6dM+at9GNDPsjm9qUcK7ha7kLuowCBVmjFK1v2 dWT2TdiGK5jHMG56CdnvwqF54PVibmWClVc4WMrs7s4qsULBx4f9zvYtEUOF50d9EF6gEgkOX 2W+Q/B37LHIqCivthszrVCJAhElii3QnGq2DYcYtzUW/vgA3G4B7XrtGFkiesii9aEwuOKwEf fONuFFLDmCIZqb3lkE3zti03utGjvkoqF3qq9ohTKJBTVw8KyKBlbs= Message-ID-Hash: FUJXAEZJRK5B6B6MYXSPPLDNF6D2CB2D X-Message-ID-Hash: FUJXAEZJRK5B6B6MYXSPPLDNF6D2CB2D X-MailFrom: luther.johnson@makerlisp.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------005040DC192C584E26CD8FD1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I agree that there are certainly times when CMake's leverage has solved problems for people. My most visceral reactions were mostly based on cases where no tool like CMake was really required at all, but CMake had wormed its way into the consciousness of new programmers who never learned make, and thought CMake was doing them a great service. Bugged the hell out of me, this dumbing-down of the general programming population. My bad experiences were all as a consultant to teams that needed a lot of expert help, when they had thrown CMake along with a lot of other unnecessary complexity into their half-working solutions. So I guess it was all tarred by the same flavor of badly conceived work. But then as I tried to make my peace with the CMake build as it was, I got a deeper understanding of how intrinsically irrational CMake is (and again, behavior changing on the same builds depending on CMake release versions. So there certainly are times when something a little more comprehensive, outside of make, is required. ./configure && make is not so bad, it's not irrational, sometimes it's overkill, but it works ... but only if the system is kind of Unix-y. If not you may wind up doing a lot of work to pretend it's more Unix-y, so instead of porting your software, you're porting it to a common Unix-like subset, then emulating that Unix-like subset on your platform, both ends against the middle. That can be ultimately counter-productive too. I have an emotional reaction when I see the porting problem become transformed into adherence to the "one true way", be it Unix, or one build system or another. Because you're now just re-casting the problem into acceptance of that other tool or OS core as the way it should be. Instead of getting your thing to work on the other platform, by translating from what your application wants, into how to do it on whatever system, you're changing your application to be more like what the "one true system" wants to see. You've given up control of your idea of your app's core OS requirements, you've decided to "just give in and be UNiX (or Windows, or whatever)". To me, that's backwards. On 06/20/2024 12:59 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > For me, precomputing an environment is the same as a wysiwyg editor: > what you see is all you get. If it works for you, and the environment > that's inferred from predefined CPP symbols is correct, then it's an > easy solution. When it's not, and for me it often wasn't, it's nothing > but pain and suffering and saying MF all the time (also not Make > File).... I was serious when I've said I've had more positive cmake > experiences (which haven't been all that impressive: I'm more > impressed with meson in this space, for example) than I ever had with > IMakefiles, imake, xmkmf, etc... But It's also clear that different > people have lived through different hassles, and I respect that... > > I've noticed too that we're relatively homogeneous these days: > Everybody is a Linux box or Windows Box or MacOS, except for a few > weird people on the fringes (like me). It's a lot easier to get things > right enough w/o autotools, scons, meson, etc than it was in The Bad > Old Days of the Unix Wars and the Innovation Famine that followed from > the late 80s to the mid 2000s.... In that environment, there's one of > two reactions: Test Everything or Least Common Denominator. And we've > seen both represented in this thread. As well as the 'There's so few > environments, can't you precompute them all?' sentiment from newbies > that never bloodied their knuckles with some of the less like Research > Unix machines out there like AIX and HP/UX... Or worse, Eunice... > > Warner > > On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 12:42=E2=80=AFPM Adam Thornton > wrote: > > > > Someone clearly never used imake... > > > There's a reason that the xmkmf command ends in the two letters it > does, and I'm never going to believe it's "make file". > > Adam > > On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 11:34=E2=80=AFAM Greg A. Woods > wrote: > > At Thu, 20 Jun 2024 01:01:01 -0400, Scot Jenkins via TUHS > > wrote: > Subject: [TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less > Unix philosophy' The Register > > > > "Greg A. Woods" > wrote: > > > > > I will not ever allow cmake to run, or even exist, on the > machines I > > > control... > > > > I'm not a fan of cmake either. > > > > How do you deal with software that only builds with cmake > (or meson, > > scons, ... whatever the developer decided to use as the > build tool)? > > What alternatives exist short of reimplementing the build > process in > > a standard makefile by hand, which is obviously very time > consuming, > > error prone, and will probably break the next time you want > to update > > a given package? > > The alternative _is_ to reimplement the build process. > > For example, see: > > https://github.com/robohack/yajl/ > > This example is a far more comprehensive rewrite than is usually > necessary as I wanted a complete and portable example that > could be used > as the basis for further projects. > > An example of a much simpler reimplementation: > > http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/external/mit/ctwm/bin/ct= wm/Makefile?rev=3D1.12&content-type=3Dtext/x-cvsweb-markup&only_with_tag= =3DMAIN > > -- > Greg A. Woods > > > > Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack > > > Planix, Inc. > > Avoncote Farms > > --------------005040DC192C584E26CD8FD1 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I agree that there are certainly times when CMake's leverage has solved problems for people. My most visceral reactions were mostly based on cases where no tool like CMake was really required at all, but CMake had wormed its way into the consciousness of new programmers who never learned make, and thought CMake was doing them a great service. Bugged the hell out of me, this dumbing-down of the general programming population. My bad experiences were all as a consultant to teams that needed a lot of expert help, when they had thrown CMake along with a lot of other unnecessary complexity into their half-working solutions. So I guess it was all tarred by the same flavor of badly conceived work. But then as I tried to make my peace with the CMake build as it was, I got a deeper understanding of how intrinsically irrational CMake is (and again, behavior changing on the same builds depending on CMake release versions.

So there certainly are times when something a little more comprehensive, outside of make, is required. ./configure && make is not so bad, it's not irrational, sometimes it's overkill, but it works ... but only if the system is kind of Unix-y. If not you may wind up doing a lot of work to pretend it's more Unix-y, so instead of porting your software, you're porting it to a common Unix-like subset, then emulating that Unix-like subset on your platform, both ends against the middle. That can be ultimately counter-productive too.

I have an emotional reaction when I see the porting problem become transformed into adherence to the "one true way", be it Unix, or one build system or another. Because you're now just re-casting the problem into acceptance of that other tool or OS core as the way it should be. Instead of getting your thing to work on the other platform, by translating from what your application wants, into how to do it on whatever system, you're changing your application to be more like what the "one true system" wants to see. You've given up control of your idea of your app's core OS requirements, you've decided to "just give in and be UNiX (or Windows, or whatever)". To me, that's backwards.

On 06/20/2024 12:59 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
For me, precomputing an environment is the same as a wysiwyg editor: what you see is all you get. If it works for you, and the environment that's inferred from predefined CPP symbols is correct, then it's an easy solution. When it's not, and for me it often wasn't, it's nothing but pain and suffering and saying MF all the time (also not Make File)....=C2= =A0 I was serious when I've said I've had more positive cmake experiences (which haven't been all that impressive: I'm more impressed with meson in this space, for example) than I ever had with IMakefiles, imake, xmkmf, etc...=C2=A0 But It's also cl= ear that different people have lived through different hassles, and I respect that...

I've noticed too that we're relatively homogeneous these days: Everybody is a Linux box or Windows Box or MacOS, except for a few weird people on the fringes (like me). It's a lot easier to get things right enough w/o autotools, scons, meson, etc than it was in The Bad Old Days of the Unix Wars and the Innovation Famine that followed from the late 80s to the mid 2000s.... In that environment, there's one of two reactions: Test Everything or Least Common Denominator. And we've seen both represented in this thread.=C2=A0 As well as the 'There's s= o few environments, can't you precompute them all?' sentiment from newbies that never bloodied their knuckles with some of the less like Research Unix machines out there like AIX and HP/UX...=C2=A0 Or worse, Eunice...

Warner

On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 12:42=E2=80=AFPM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com&= gt; wrote:


S= omeone clearly never used imake...

There's a reason that the xmkmf command ends in the two letters it does, and I'm never going to believe it's "make file".

Adam

On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 a= t 11:34=E2=80=AFAM Greg A. Woods <wood= s@robohack.ca> wrote:
At Thu, 20 Jun 2024 01:01:01 -0400, Scot Jenkins via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register
>
> "Greg A. Woods" <wood= s@robohack.ca> wrote:
>
> > I will not ever allow cmake to run, or even exist, on the machines I
> > control...
>
> I'm not a fan of cmake either.
>
> How do you deal with software that only builds with cmake (or meson,
> scons, ... whatever the developer decided to use as the build tool)?
> What alternatives exist short of reimplementing the build process in
> a standard makefile by hand, which is obviously very time consuming,
> error prone, and will probably break the next time you want to update
> a given package?

The alternative _is_ to reimplement the build process.

For example, see:

=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 https://github.com/= robohack/yajl/

This example is a far more comprehensive rewrite than is usually
necessary as I wanted a complete and portable example that could be used
as the basis for further projects.

An example of a much simpler reimplementation:

=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 http://cvsweb.NetBS= D.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/external/mit/ctwm/bin/ctwm/Makefile?rev=3D1.12&co= ntent-type=3Dtext/x-cvsweb-markup&only_with_tag=3DMAIN

--
=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 = =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2= =A0 =C2=A0 Greg A. Woods <gwoods@= acm.org>

Kelowna, BC=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0+1 250 762-7675=C2=A0 =C2= =A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods= @planix.com>=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0Avoncote Farms <wood= s@avoncote.ca>

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