I'm Too Old for Broken Builds
I'm too old for broken builds.
I'm also too old for arguments about build tooling that feel like a Religous Holy War.
Use whatever you use, dig whatever you dig, as long as it actually works:
- CMake
- Meson
- Make (very pedantically crafted)
- Bazel
- Waf
- Scons
- Autotools
- A bunch of weird scripts
- The Emacs Operating System
- The latest web3-scale blockchain technology
- A magnetized needle and a steady hand
- An obscure bespoke thing created by a single 1980s Soviet programmer who was completely isolated during development, understood no English, and didn't believe in documentation where less than 3 humans on the planet still even know it exists, only 1 of which actually knows how it works... if you can actually find her and win her trust as she's remarkably anti-social.
- ... use your imagination ...
When I get inside a build script file, there's only one thing I really want to do: Leave It ASAP and get back to the real task at hand. You can optimize for that if you like.. or not.
Would it be better if C/C++ had a One Single Thing like those cool kids over at Rust and Go?
Sure.
But, it's too late unless you can invent a time-machine and go back to say 1970? Then again, I can think of better things to do with a time-machine than "fix build systems", so nevermind.
C'est la vie