Build system (was Re: Future of KDE Development)

[Guillaume Laurent]

On Saturday 19 February 2005 16:37, Dirk Mueller wrote:
> 
> Well, thats a solution.. but do you really think scons will make tracing
> bugs easier? if so, why exactly?

Are you seriously asking this question ? :-)

Well, because it's a single python script (and Python has a debugger) rather 
than a huge Makefile  + m4 + Makefile.in + shell + configure + configure.in + 
configure.in.in + aclocal + Makefile.am + ... etc... ad nauseam.

> > Quite the contrary I think this will backfire, like it already has.
> > People will hack the buildsystem anyway, but it will be even uglier
> > because of the crippled language. I'd rather have a build system which
> > lets you do whatever you like in a maintainable way, if you really have
> > to.
>
> you can do things in a maintainable way already, if you really have to.

Yes, you can also write maintainable code in Perl if you really have to. The 
point is that it's easier to do that in Python rather than with the current 
system, so people are more likely to do it.

-- 
      Guillaume.
      http://www.telegraph-road.org