[dmd-beta] D 2.062 beta

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:32:43 -0800
Walter Bright <walter at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> 
> On 2/10/2013 4:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> > On 2/10/13 2:37 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >> These things make me nervous - they are complex and when they go
> >> wrong it can be baffling. Is it really a problem to have the user
> >> simply edit the file to match his system?
> >
> > Not sure how complex the script is, but generally asking users to
> > edit makefiles to match does not scale well at all. IMHO there's a
> > sort of goodness hierarchy when it comes to scripting:
> >
> > 1. one command that does everything, e.g. "./world" or "make world"
> >
> > 10. one command with arguments, and the exact arguments depend on
> > the system, e.g. "make DMD_HOME=/usr/bin/dmd MODEL=64"
> >
> > 100. asking the user to edit configuration files by hand in order
> > to get things done
> >
> > 1000. manual with a recipe with steps for getting things done
> >
> > 10000. folklore on how to get things done
> >
> > There's a big drop in automation from one level to the next, and in
> > particular there's a surprising drop from the command to the
> > command with specific parameters.
> 
> 
> The general difficulty is one I've had with MS tools from the 1980's:
> they change in unpredictable ways from release to release, and a
> *lot* of time gets wasted trying to deal with multiple versions and
> the endless calls for help about it not working with some random new
> version. We see this in a smaller way with the evolution of Apple's
> OSX tools - it's constant breakage. Linux tends to be pretty stable
> from year to year.
> 
> Instead of being terribly clever about it, having a simple edittable
> file is at least easier to support.

Having a simple editable file is great to have as a backup in case
things do go wrong or someone wants to do something manually, but that
shouldn't preclude making sure things normally "just work" when they
can reasonably be made to do so.

People expect anything automatable to be automated. Manual
configuration is sooo "90's linux".