✧✦Catherine✦✧

current status: writing a build system in cmake

not "something that builds a project and is also implemented in implemented in cmake"

no, it is "something that is implemented in cmake and can be used to implement a build system that is in turn used as a part of a build system (also in cmake)"

May 11 at 7:55pmWeb
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

i'm making it sound more complicated than it is, the actual thing boils down to "cmake's dependency resolution algorithm doesn't work for a particular edge case i'm having, so i'm implementing a different one, in cmake script"

but also "dependency resolution algorithm" is basically what a build system is, so,

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
hasn't read the book / has read the book
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

i don't know if the fact that doing this is somewhat normal in a certain type of cmake project makes it better or worse

(compiler component dependencies are sometimes handled this way. LLVM has a much more elaborate system that boils down to the same thing. they also let you interact with it out of tree, which mercifully i don't have to care about)

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

to be clear i'm not doing this because i love writing cmake syntax that would drive mere mortals mad. i do it because i'm replacing a "simple Makefile" that has perhaps once fit that bill, but eventually turned into a 1200-line (not including *.inc files) monstrosity with a load-bearing rot13 call inside of a manual reimplementation of half of git submodule

(this particular monstrosity has since been removed but the overall genre has not changed)

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

every time you run make it executes so many $(shell) calls (there are 40 of them, though some would be ifeq'd out) that it takes more time to create a dependency graph than to incrementally compile and link one compilation unit*

* if you use lld and split-dwarf, but still

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
this sort of thing is why when i see a project advertising "a simple Makefile, none of that [build system the author hates]" i see red. simple is in the eye of the beholder. and more often than not i have to patch the damn thing to make it cross-compile at all
Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowMay 11
@whitequark Gah. This, this, this. I like having Makefiles or similar to capture blessed ways of invoking build systems, but yeah, there's a reason build systems exist, ffs.
Show threadEloy.May 11
@xgranade @whitequark developer looking at essential complexity: I can remove this accidental complexity
Show thread>>>>>>>May 11
@whitequark every succesful Makefile-driven project I've seen is in fact a complex Makefile
Show thread>>>>>>>May 11
@whitequark or i suppose a more accurate way of looking at it, is it seems the Makefile complexity scales with project complexity, and if it is not doing that then there is probably something fragile about it you're not seeing
Show thread>>>>>>>May 11
@whitequark the lua interpreter, for example, 450 lines of Makefile. and that's plenty enough to cross compile, build on a wide array of OSes, and even target microcontrollers like on my Nintendo DS. Good example of a simple project with a simple Makefile

xD
Show threadnadjaMay 11

@whitequark This is why I really enjoy the sentiment behind shake. Because sometimes when it comes to build systems the “simplest” solution means giving the developer access to all of Haskell and telling her to go nuts :D

(Not saying shake is a good general solution for build systems. It very much isn't. But it beats the bundle of legacy makefiles that could legally drink in most of europe 9 times of 10)

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

@dequbed I haven't used shake but I did use ocamlbuild and the other thing I forget the name of, and it was somewhat preferable to some of the makefiles

dune (a declarative ocaml build system) is way better though

Show threadnadjaMay 11
@whitequark I like Shake because it's very good about using the ability of Haskell to create ad-hoc declarative DSLs to give an user a very declarative toolkit while having an escape hatch *right there*. But I have used little of the alternatives either, I rarely have to fiddle around in the bowels of complex build processes and I'm very glad about that.
Show threadAda Worcester 🏳️‍⚧️May 11
@whitequark yeah, for every well-designed makefile that works on every system of relevance and is easy to maintain there are maybe a thousand absolutely _terrible_ ones which you can't maintain well, lack fundamental features, and make me wonder if the developer knows what they're even doing
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMay 11
@pikhq @whitequark there are a lot of people for whom build systems are just not on their radar. I don’t understand them in the least, but I have definitely observed them in action.
Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)May 12

@whitequark

What happens if we remove all the abstractions? That will make everything simpler!

Show threadDaniel O'ConnorMay 12
@david_chisnall @whitequark and thus the wheel turns
Show threadEli SchwartzMay 12

@whitequark

The core insight into "a simple Makefile, none of that [build system the author hates]" is that every project that does more than compile a single C source file to a single executable on a single operating system (you need build systems to determine if the file extension should be ".exe", after all)... needs a build system.

Some of those build systems are written in un-portable GNU Make, named Makefile instead of GNUmakefile, and still do the same work as a gnu ./configure script.

Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈May 11
@whitequark The culture of "it's nearly free to fork and exec" is wild. Got us autoconf too, I guess
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11

@recursive my solution to this was to use kati, google's make with a ninja backend

technically this probably caused some sort of staleness somewhere in the system but it was so much faster when i needed rapid iteration that it was totally worth it

Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈May 11
@whitequark coworkers of mine several years ago changed our forked 'premake' (some lua thing) from generating makefiles to ninja files, and it seemed like a decent thing to target with automatic generation
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@recursive oh yeah ninja is excellent. not just the software but the specification, which is one of the few emergent ones that are just good somehow
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@recursive ninja files are basically what makefiles should have been, easily parsable, mostly declarative dependency graph descriptions without the bewildering mass of features that accumulates if you also try to shoehorn an UI into it
Show threadChrisMay 11
@whitequark Catherine is just doing build system freediving again
Show threadSnoopJ 🔜 San FranciscoMay 11
@chrisvest @whitequark what an amazing turn of phrase, thank you for this
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@SnoopJ @chrisvest i have been using this project for more than half of my career
Show threadNoisytootMay 11
@whitequark what is it using rot13 for?
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@noisytoot i think it was trying to grep itself but without hitting the grep call, or something similarly unhinged
Show threadLambdaMay 11
@whitequark oh lmao I think I know what you're talking about, and I think I touched that rot13 monstrosity at one point
Show threadPxl PhileMay 11
@whitequark a load bearing WHAT again?!
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMay 11
@whitequark ah, the fingerprints of an engineer who is very capable, but doesn’t bother to read the docs or think about alternatives…
I’ve reimplemented a git LFS client without knowing that’s what I was doing.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@c0dec0dec0de oh man that's kinda impressive. i once considered implementing a git LFS client while knowing exactly what i'm doing and figured i really don't want to do that
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMay 11
@whitequark I mean very minimal. Like it fetched the bits I needed. “God, why are these binary files just a sha hash? Oh, and there are files over here with those hashes as names, fine, let’s do this.”
Show thread0xC0DEC0DE07EAMay 11
@whitequark self-awareness is not always online
Show threadJohn "Dobbymoodge" LambMay 12

@whitequark apologies if this is covered in the thread already, but you can't simply say "load-bearing rot13" and NOT link to the commit(s) in question.

I feel like code review for such a thing would require a psychology degree.

Show threadAndrewMay 11
@whitequark Any sufficiently complicated Cmake project contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of a working build system.
Show threadasmwMay 11

@whitequark

The world of buildsystems is weird and fascinating.

My opinion on cmake is that (for certain domains) it's the best there is, and that's sad.

Show threadJames WidmanMay 12
@asmw @whitequark to some extent, cmake is a natural consequence of the fact that every platform is almost actively hostile to the idea that 3rd party developers also target other platforms
Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowMay 11
@whitequark lolz
Show threadsoloMay 11
@whitequark which book?
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@solonovamax the meme i'm obliquely referencing was about GoT red wedding
Show threadPhilip GuentherMay 12
@whitequark
Having called out to tsort from a GNUmakefile to order library builds, I'm taking emotional damage from this thread.
Show threadAlexBMay 13
@whitequark yo dawg, I heard you liked build systems
Show threadDemi Marie ObenourMay 13
@whitequark Now I’m curious what the edge case is!
Show threadasmwMay 11

@whitequark

You... choose to do that?

Blink twice if you're under duress.

Show threadCassandra is only carbon nowMay 11
@whitequark checks out
Show thread🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦May 11
@whitequark We live in a broken world.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@grumpybozo it's an improvement on "a simple Makefile" that i'm replacing (it's so "simple" that it has several instances of load bearing rot13. not a joke)
Show threadDemi Marie ObenourMay 13
@whitequark @grumpybozo What is the rot13 for?????
Show threadDemi Marie ObenourMay 13
@whitequark @grumpybozo More seriously, have you considered using Shake? It’s a Haskell eDSL, so I would expect it would support just about anything one needs.
Show threadRobin GareusMay 11

@whitequark That must be the most masochistic tech project short of installing Window ME.

Now I wonder what you're up to next :)

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@x42 in something like 2019 i tried to improve the "simple makefile" that this project used to have and it damn near gave me a psychotic break after i stared at it for three days. believe me, meta-cmake is an improvement
Show threadaismallardMay 11
@whitequark c²make
Show threadarcterusMay 11

@[email protected] @whitequark

cmake with classes

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧May 11
@arcterus @aismallard aaa
Show threadnelhageMay 11
@whitequark I have described the Linux kernel's build system as "a build system implemented in GNU make," so, seems normal.
Show threadNicolás AlvarezMay 12
@whitequark someone wrote a raytracer and PNG encoder in CMake sooo