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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Python recompile
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 20:37:14 -0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:24:15 +0000, bart wrote:

> On 11/03/2025 01:33, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>
>> You apparently do not get fact that people want tools to automate
>> various routine tasks.
> 
> What routine task is this? I'm talking exclusively about turning a bunch
> of source files in some language (here it is C) into an executable
> binary.

Interesting that you don’t see an app build as a “routine task”.

Think of how often, while developing a program in (at least partly) a 
compiled a language, you have to go through

    edit → build → run → crash

ad nauseam.

This is why we have makefiles, because usually the whole source does not 
need to be recompiled each time, only the parts that have changed since 
the last run.

> However, what I'm arguing about is that this simple task has become
> unnecessarily elaborate on OSes like Linux, by introducing makefiles,
> OS-specific scripts, and OS-specific utilities.

And yet all that automation makes it quite easy to build quite complex 
apps on Linux. You were the one who had trouble on Windows.

> If scripts are going to be used, then use them at the developer site
> only, and make the script generate the streamlined set of files for the
> particular platform of interest.

Funny, that’s how Autotools works (generating the configure script from 
the much more human-readable configure.ac source), and yet you were 
complaining about what an unreadable blob it produced.

> It should not rely on anything that is not native to the target
> platform.

Unfortunately that rules out developing for Windows completely, since 
there is essentially nothing development-related that is native to 
Windows. Everything has to be added on.

> To build open source projects, I'm happy to use an existing C compiler.
> I'm NOT happy about bending over backwards to use CYGWIN, MSYS2 or WSL
> because the developers insist on forcing their Linux dependencies down
> my throat.

Beggars can’t be choosers. As long as you don’t have the skills or 
patience to actually contribute to such development, you have to accept 
what you get.