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▲ moralestapia 15 hours ago

>The purpose of a ./configure script is basically to run the compiler a bunch of times and check which runs succeeded.

Wait is this true? (!)

▲gdwatson 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Historically, different Unixes varied a lot more than they do today. Say you want your program to use the C library function foo on platforms where it’s available and the function bar where it isn’t: You can write both versions and choose between them based on a C preprocessor macro, and the program will use the best option available for the platform where it was compiled.

But now the user has to set the preprocessor macro appropriately when he builds your program. Nobody wants to give the user a pop quiz on the intricacies of his C library every time he goes to install new software. So instead the developer writes a shell script that tries to compile a trivial program that uses function foo. If the script succeeds, it defines the preprocessor macro FOO_AVAILABLE, and the program will use foo; if it fails, it doesn’t define that macro, and the program will fall back to bar.

That shell script grew into configure. A configure script for an old and widely ported piece of software can check for a lot of platform features.

▲im3w1l 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not saying we should send everyone a docker container with a full copy of ubuntu, electron and foo.js whether they have foo in their c library or not, but maybe there is a middle ground?

▲moralestapia 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think this is a gigantic point in favor of interpreted languages.

JS and Python wouldn't be what they are today if you had to `./configure` every website you want to visit, lmao.

▲cesarb 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> JS and Python wouldn't be what they are today if you had to `./configure` every website you want to visit, lmao.

You just gave me a flashback to the IE6 days. Yes, that's precisely what we did. On every page load.

It's called "feature detection", and was the recommended way of doing things (the bad alternative was user agent sniffing, in which you read the user agent string to guess the browser, and then assumed that browser X always had feature Y; the worst alternative was to simply require browser X).

▲klysm 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The closer and deeper you look into the C toolchains the more grossed out you’ll be

▲acuozzo 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Hands have to get dirty somewhere. "As deep as The Worker's City lay underground, so high above towered the City of Metropolis."

The choices are:

1. Restrict the freedom of CPU designers to some approximation of the PDP11. No funky DSP chips. No crazy vector processors.

2. Restrict the freedom of OS designers to some approximation of Unix. No bespoke realtime OSes. No research OSes.

3. Insist programmers use a new programming language for these chips and OSes. (This was the case prior to C and Unix.)

4. Insist programmers write in assembly and/or machine code. Perhaps a macro-assembler is acceptable here, but this is inching toward C.

The cost of this flexibility is gross tooling to make it manageable. Can it be done without years and years of accrued M4 and sh? Perhaps, but that's just CMake and CMake is nowhere near as capable as Autotools & friends are when working with legacy platforms.

▲klysm 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There is no real technical justification for the absolute shit show that is the modern C toolchain

▲moralestapia 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I like C/C++ a lot, A LOT, and I agree with your comment.

Man, if this got fixed it would be one of the best languages to develop for.

My wishlist:

* Quick compilation times (obv.) or some sort of tool that makes it feel like an interpreted language, at least when you're developing, then do the usual compile step to get an optimized binary.

* A F...... CLEAR AND CONSISTENT WAY TO TELL THE TOOLCHAIN THIS LIBRARY IS HERE AND THIS ONE IS OVER THERE (sorry but, come on ...).

* A single command line argument to output a static binary.

* Anything that gets us closer to the "build-once run-anywhere" philosophy of "Cosmopolitan Libc". Even if an intermediate execution layer is needed. One could say, "oh, but this is C, not Java", but it is already de facto a broken Java, because you still need an execution layer, call it stdlib, GLIB, whatever, if those shared libraries are not on your system with their exact version matching, your program breaks ... Just stop pretending and ship the "C virtual machine", lmao.

▲Am4TIfIsER0ppos 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes.