Re:A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
by csense on Monday August 20, 2012 @01:22PM
(#4408667)
> conflates building the packages and using the packages.
Yes. Much of his poor experience is due to build systems.
Anyone who's developed anything can tell you how fragile and finicky build systems can be.
Since build systems are used by developers, who can deal with complexity much better than "ordinary" users, they tend to be rough around the edges.
They're also unglamorous infrastructure, so volunteers tend not to spend time on them if they're not paid. And they have a tendency to break the entire application if broken, and are often part of the "interface" of the software (since every distro who builds package X from source uses build scripts that rely on for example ./configure with particular options), so maintainers tend to take an "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude.
GNU projects in particular -- whose autoconf the author complains of -- have quite a bit of built-up cruft since many of them are very old, and also vital infrastructure of most FOSS OS'es.
Yes. Much of his poor experience is due to build systems.
Anyone who's developed anything can tell you how fragile and finicky build systems can be.
Since build systems are used by developers, who can deal with complexity much better than "ordinary" users, they tend to be rough around the edges.
They're also unglamorous infrastructure, so volunteers tend not to spend time on them if they're not paid. And they have a tendency to break the entire application if broken, and are often part of the "interface" of the software (since every distro who builds package X from source uses build scripts that rely on for example ./configure with particular options), so maintainers tend to take an "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude.
GNU projects in particular -- whose autoconf the author complains of -- have quite a bit of built-up cruft since many of them are very old, and also vital infrastructure of most FOSS OS'es.