An open question to Rebuild users

[kenny]

Gregor Richards wrote:
> Judging by the amount of feedback I receive on rebuild, vs the amount of
> feedback I receive on DSSS, I'd say that 95% of rebuild users are not
> DSSS users. That is, there are more users who use rebuild alone than in
> tandem with DSSS. I could be wrong - maybe DSSS just has no bugs :).
> 
> Rebuild was designed primarily to complement DSSS, and DSSS was designed
> to be the ideal replacement for 'make' and pals for D, so I find it a
> bit disconcerting that a tool I designed primarily to be a background
> tool is being used as a primary development tool by so many.
> 
> So, the obvious question is: Why? Why use rebuild and not DSSS? I
> imagine there must be some misconceptions about DSSS, what it is, what
> it's for, et cetera.
> 
> I imagine some common misconceptions are:
> 
>  * DSSS is intended solely to be D's answer to CPAN - that is, a network
> installation tool. This just isn't true, the net portion is only a small
> chunk of what DSSS can do.
> 
>  * DSSS provides no advantages over using just a build tool. Also not
> true - even if DSSS provided /only/ a convenient build configuration
> file format (dsss.conf), that would be a sizable advantage of rebuild.
> DSSS provides much more, however, including easy generation of libraries
> with associated .di files, installation, documentation, etc, etc. If you
> really want your rebuild profile for an application or library be
> portable, you would need to either have several Makefiles or response
> files wrapped around rebuild (nasty), or use DSSS (nice).
> 
>  * DSSS is not portable to Windows. I think most people know that I'm
> not a Windows user, and Windows is mostly a foreign environment to me.
> However, this is not true. I've done my best, and am very responsive to
> bug reports, and DSSS does indeed work on Windows just as well as it
> does on Posix systems.
> 
>  * `dsss` is hard to type. Well, I've typed it more than a dozen times
> in this post, and my left ring finger is in no particular pain :)
> 
> If your concern or concept isn't noted here, please tell me / ask me! If
> DSSS /isn't/ everything you need it to be, help me /make/ it what you
> need it to be :).
> 
>  - Gregor Richards

I'll be honest. Your message suggested to me that I try dsss/rebuild again cause it's never worked for me. I have been using a very old version of build for a long time (like 6-9 months old). Today was the first day that dsss/rebuild actually compiled for me. So, really I couldn't try it. I will try it now though. If it can replace my seriously aging version of build, I'm probably converted :)

Kenny