Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: bart <bc@freeuk.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Python recompile
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2025 00:01:45 +0000
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <vqaol7$2l1ar$2@dont-email.me>
References: <vq1qas$j22$1@gallifrey.nk.ca> <vq1uvb$qbuq$1@dont-email.me>
 <vq22nc$rvb8$1@dont-email.me> <vq24kd$rg6i$1@dont-email.me>
 <vq3oag$18iv6$1@dont-email.me> <vq4hf2$1brf7$1@dont-email.me>
 <vq4l3d$1ck9e$1@dont-email.me> <vq4m0u$1ctpn$1@dont-email.me>
 <vq4n05$1d5dv$1@dont-email.me> <vq4om7$1dbo2$2@dont-email.me>
 <vq6dqh$1pskk$1@dont-email.me> <vq6f8p$1pmnk$1@dont-email.me>
 <vq6gqc$1qcp8$1@dont-email.me> <vq6ips$1pmnk$2@dont-email.me>
 <vq6j5h$1qosf$1@dont-email.me> <20250304092827.708@kylheku.com>
 <vq7g1p$1vmg5$1@dont-email.me> <vq94dt$2boso$1@dont-email.me>
 <vqai13$2jr7s$2@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2025 01:01:44 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="fd83b2795c6da370cc681229f8db3e15";
	logging-data="2786651"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18iVwhTr8nT5I7gbutsWOa+"
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:Oe4fu983udtrI0wmQpo0WgWp9Tk=
In-Reply-To: <vqai13$2jr7s$2@dont-email.me>
Content-Language: en-GB
Bytes: 3277

On 05/03/2025 22:08, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 09:10:21 -0000 (UTC), Muttley wrote:
> 
>> Frankly any build system that has a 35K configure file needs revisiting.
>> No package is so complex as to require that much setup.
> 
> Feel free to “revisit” it, and let us know what can be dropped.

Pretty much all of it? Most of it seems to be about determining system 
characteristics, something you don't need to repeat for every 
application you build on /the same machine/.

Besides, what is the point of determining whether a C implementation 
supports 'stdio.h' for example?  If it's not present, you're pretty much 
****ed anyway, and you will quickly find that out without needing a 
35,000 line to script to tell you (about 600 pages if printed out).

In any case, the configure script is not run for every incremental 
build, but there is nothing to stop the C implementation changing or 
being deleted in the meantime.

It is utterly pointless.

(I once had an open source project with a similarly large configure 
script. I managed to run it on Linux under VirtualBox; it took 5 
minutes, most of which was running that script.

It wouldn't run on pure Windows, but I managed to figure out what C 
files were involved, and was able to get those compiled more or less 
with my C compiler.

Building that program from scratch on Windows took one second, on the 
same machine. No thanks to that stupid script.)

> 
> The code doesn’t write itself, you know.

The configure file doesn't write the application code. It's designed to 
consume machine resources, plus ensure you can't directly build the app 
on Windows.