Falsehoods programmers believe about build systems

[pozorvlak]

Inspired by Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time, and far, far too much time spent fighting autotools. Thanks to Aaron Crane, totherme and zeecat for their comments on earlier versions.It is accepted by all decent people that Make sucks and needs to die, and that autotools needs to be shot, decapitated, staked

Comments

[ungratefulninja]

- All build systems look like make.

[ungratefulninja]

And on a related, $DAYJOB-aggravating note:

- Tools always exit with non-zero status on failure.
- Tools never exit with non-zero status on success.

[pozorvlak]

Aaaaaargh. I feel your pain.

[ext_1197290]

Though I'm mostly irritated by those tools rather than the build systems which get that "wrong"...

[gareth_rees]

• A build always runs on a single computer.
  
• There's always a human available to interact with the build system.
  

[pozorvlak]

Good ones!

[pozorvlak]

I'm inclined to say that the less scripting your build manager has to do the better - though a tool that doesn't require scripting in any situation sounds like an impossibility (and a tool that doesn't allow scripting sounds like it would eventually become painful).

[senji]

• Build steps are idempotent
• It can be known in advance how many times a particular build step should be executed
• Build steps do not modify the repository
• It is possible to determine whether the build will succeed
• It is possible to determine whether the build will even halt

[pozorvlak]

*smacks forehead* - all good ones.

[anonymous]

What is the point of this?

[anonymous]

disabusement

[pozorvlak]

Sorry that wasn't clear - I've added an explanation to the top of the post.

It's an exercise in self-importance and stupidity.

[anonymous]

This guy will never create a build system. Most of these assumptions are not in fact made, and the ones are made are for pragmatic reasons. I'm thankful for systems like make and cargo, and that I've never had to work with this guy or use any of his software.