Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other languages with Meson

Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by papaf on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @03:25AM (#24845531)

What is a serious language?

I would call C a serious language. Its running your laptop, your phone, your car, the airplane you took on holiday, the fighter planes that protect your airspace, your washing machine, and if you are unfortunate enough to get seriously ill it will probably be running on the medical equipment that keeps you alive.

One of the reasons it is serious is because it is standardized and multiple implementations exist.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by Xylakant on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @04:41AM (#24845926)

Brainfuck has a language specification (it's nice and short) https://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck and a long list of implementations, some even hardware backed. https://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck_implementations

So if that's the criteria, then brainfuck is a serious language.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by blub on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @06:55AM (#24846544)

It seems implausible that you don't know the difference between an international standard and a specification document written (of all places) in a wiki, which means you're being purposefully obtuse and don't really have any counter-arguments.

If one wants to use a tool in a life-critical system, a system that might be in use for decades they're going to reach for one of the said "serious languages": C, C++, Ada, etc. That list's very short and it includes neither Brainfuck nor Rust for that matter.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by Xylakant on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @08:45AM (#24847254)

Ok, I picked brainfuck as an - obviously extreme - example of how a language can tick both those boxes and still be not a serious language. I can pick a number of examples of languages that have no international standard and a single implementation and are used in systems that might be in use for decades. Let's take go. A single implementation, it does have a spec, but I'm not aware of an ISO standard. ADA, while having an ISO standard, isn't exactly blessed with many implementations either. Java, while having multiple implementations, is not an ISO standard.

The point is: neither of those two datapoints is a particularly useful metric on how "serious" a programming language is and much less even a useful metric on how well it is suited to any given task. Even how mainstream programming languages are is not a useful signal for that. Javascript is very much mainstream, but I hope no one ever will want to program a cars ECU in a JS dialect. Specialized applications are almost by definition the realm of specialized languages.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by jschwartzi on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @12:10PM (#24849176)

They have, in the past, reached for LISP and various other languages. What matters for life-critical systems isn't the presence or absence of a formal specification. It's more important to foster a culture of design verification and validation of tooling. You can use Brainfuck in a medical device provided you can create the right organizational architecture to ensure the quality of your Brainfuck code. It's more about creating a rational engineering organization and having a process of searching for problems and solving them proactively rather than waiting for your customers to test your code.

Of course most rational engineering organizations wouldn't choose Brainfuck because it's harder to write code that other people can evaluate. But it's not automatically out of the question if you have a good reason for its use.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by int_19h on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @08:49AM (#24847286)

It doesn't include JavaScript, either - and yet it's one of the most popular and successful PLs today. Very few people write code for a "life-critical system".

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by aprdm on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @03:39AM (#24845608)

I do wonder what other languages you consider serious apart from C. You could use similar examples for a lot of other languages, C isn't the only language used to keep our civilization alive.

I did a fair bit of development in C, and developed hard real time systems in VHDL that did involve life & death, but, wouldn't call any language used in the industry generating value as a non serious language...

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by papaf on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @07:35AM (#24846757)

I do wonder what other languages you consider serious apart from C.

Off the top of my head I thought C++ and Ada. However, you mention VHDL which I agree with and somebody else pointed out Javascript which is also a good point. The Javascript example (along with C++) make the point that serious computer languages are not necessarily great languages.

I would argue that Rust is not a serious language (at the moment [1]) because its still young, there is no specification and if anything happens to the one implementation it would be a disaster.

Despite C being a null pointer minefield, if someone was to sue a developer the argument could be made that it is an industry standard. In the less likely event that a Rust program hurt somebody what are you going to say?

[1] https://users.rust-lang.org/t/is-there-a-plan-to-get-a-forma...

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by afiori on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @03:40AM (#24845615)

So also javascript? :)

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by mmm_grayons on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @08:51AM (#24847297)

Spacex did launch a rocket with an electron interface...

In practice, though, V8 is the serious impementation. The interesting thing about C and C++ is that I don't know if any given dev is using Clang, GCC, or MSVC until I ask him. I know a JS dev is using V8.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by terafo on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @05:32AM (#24846146)

Critical software for planes is written in Ada. C is not safe enough.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by coldtea on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @06:09AM (#24846306)

That was the idea back in the 80s. Didn't turn out that way, planes, rockets, NASA, still use C just fine, and Ada was not that widely adopted in the end.

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Re:Cargo-style dependency management for C, C++ and other la... by platinumrad on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @05:57AM (#24846254)

And yet C++ was (in)famously used in the JSF... A less notorious example is Airbus's use of Frama-C.

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