Message-ID: <685b2f8b@news.ausics.net> From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) Subject: Re: Software Building Status. A Growing Annoyance. Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc References: User-Agent: tin/2.0.1-20111224 ("Achenvoir") (UNIX) (Linux/2.4.31 (i586)) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.ausics.net Date: 25 Jun 2025 09:06:52 +1000 Organization: Ausics - https://newsgroups.ausics.net Lines: 45 X-Complaints: abuse@ausics.net Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.bbs.nz!news.ausics.net!not-for-mail [ deliberately contradicting the Followup-To ] In comp.os.linux.misc Nux Vomica wrote: > Thus, other build systems were created and more and more software > packages are moving to them. On contemporary GNU/Linux, the most > commonly used alternate build systems are: > > Cmake > > Meson (using Ninja as backend) > > So what's the problem? > > The difficulty is that now the software builder has to learn > several different systems and things are no longer as simple > as they once were with Autotools. Compared to Autotools, these > alternative build systems are decidedly more complex for the > builder even if they might make things easier for the programmer. Indeed! I don't know if I've encountered Meson, but CMake drives me up the wall. It's also far more restrictive for compatibility than Autotools' configure scripts - you need a recent version of CMake installed to build recent source code releases. The CMake developers ignored requests for an equivalent to "./configure --help" early on, willfully making the transition difficult for software builders. I think they have a Windows-centric attitude where they expect only the software developers to be compiling things and hence making the build settings easy to understand for others isn't a priority. Granted if projects actually followed their advice to document the CMake build settings they use, that would help too. > I am always in favor of choice. In fact, choice is one of the > great strengths of GNU/Linux. Yet when it comes to software > building from source I feel that only a single protocol is > necessary. If looking for new software that I'll need to build myself, then CMake is an immediate turn-off - I'll choose an alternative. It's difficult when software I'm already building and using switches to CMake though. -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#