X.Org Server Bids Farewell To Autotools

[Weasel]

Yet a lof big projects have switched to said “toy” or are in the process of switching. That's a fact.

Like I said, conspiracy.

The amount of build troubles I had with Meson randomly breaking due to some fucking Python dependency/bug surpass all the other build systems combined.

Not to mention when it starts complaining of Python version too old. This will never happen with other build systems, since they're statically built. CMake can even bootstrap itself.

Literally the worst dogshit cancer in history of all build systems.

[smitty3268]

Waiting for the day when Python itself switches to Meson and then you can't build anything anymore because you can't even build Python itself.

This should literally tell you why it's a toy or stupid build system.

You realize you can't build a C compiler without a C compiler, right? Does that make C a stupid toy language?

[kpedersen]

You realize you can't build a C compiler without a C compiler, right? Does that make C a stupid toy language?

C compilers don't need to be written in C. They can be written in toy languages like Python too.

https://github.com/ShivamSarodia/ShivyC

[chuckatkins]

Waiting for the day when Python itself switches to Meson and then you can't build anything anymore because you can't even build Python itself.

CMake's build is written in CMake but only requires a C++ compiler. It works around the issue by having a bootstrap step with a shell script that manually builds a mini-cmake, enough to handle the language and generate make or Ninja files but not much else. It then uses the bootstrapped mini-cmake to configure and generate build files for the full CMake.

[sdack]

You know, the experience of compiling most software is to run configure, find a missing library, install that, and repeat until all dependencies are satisfied or a dependency is called something else on your distro, and you have to give up.

For you perhaps this is true, but why even build the software and not just download it all when you already download everything else. Save yourself the trouble.

For actual development, meaning not just a one-time compile-and-install, do I need my build processes to be reproducible. It is otherwise a nightmare to debug.

[carewolf]

I was wondering the same, and per wikipedia it seems they switched from imake to autotools around 2005.

that is the wtf moment. Everybody else were trying to ditch automake in 2005

[RahulSundaram]

that is the wtf moment. Everybody else were trying to ditch automake in 2005

Nah. Autotools remained quite popular in 2005 especially so for projects using C.

[smitty3268]

C compilers don't need to be written in C. They can be written in toy languages like Python too.

https://github.com/ShivamSarodia/ShivyC

That's true of Meson, too, though, which was sort of my point. It's just nobody cares enough to bother doing so.

[DanL]

Can't wait for the next FAD build system to come along ...

"If I CAPITALIZE the buzzword in my meme, it will make it more true." - Redfoxmoon's brain

[carewolf]

Nah. Autotools remained quite popular in 2005 especially so for projects using C.

KDE was starting to look for alternatives, because autotools were old and crap. It took a few years, but they replaced autotools a few years later with CMake (incidentely boosting CMake to a status where most people could use it, like they had prior with CVS to Subversion)