Re: Moving away from make

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 08:33:45AM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> I don't do Python or many newfangled languages.  I have worked with Make
>> for over 20 years.  The casual contributor will be one used to the
>> technology and thinking underlying Lilypond.  More likely than not
>> someone with more than a trace of free software project experience in
>> them.
>
> You are incorrect on this point.

[...]

> Yes, various expert FLOSS members (such as Reinhold, Carl, and
> IIRC yourself) have stepped forward to fix a few things in the
> builds -- but the only people who are "working" on the build
> system "full time" are windows users.
> (that said, Phil recently bought a fast computer so that he can
> make builds faster and thus experiment more easily)

Uh, you changed topic.  The topic was "the casual contributor", not
"working fulltime".

I was talking about those people who _don't_ focus on the build system
because they prefer contributing elsewhere.

And I was saying that turning the build system into something that only
experts in the build system can handle is a bad idea.

A contorted system using autogenerated Makefiles is that.  But a system
written and maintained in Python is that as well.

In my opinion, jumping to yet-another-system instead of cleaning up the
current system is a step backwards, unless one can prove that the
current system can't provide the required functionality without
exceeding reasonable complexity, and a new system can.

> Don't tell me that experienced hackers will take care of the build
> system.  They aren't.

Changing the build system to something where they have a plausible
reason not to take care is not going to improve matters.

Even full-time contributors come and go eventually.  A build system that
is only accessible to those who have left already is not going to help.

-- 
David Kastrup