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by lifthrasiir 786 days ago
Ninja is simple and fast, but intentionally limited in order to not be programmable. Make is powerful and versatile (especially the GNU variant) but has an arcane syntax and lots of pitfalls. I feel that there is a niche between make and ninja for the task runner.
1 comments
dragontamer 786 days ago
> I feel that there is a niche between make and ninja for the task runner.

I think that's called CMake.

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ryukoposting 786 days ago
As one of the unfortunate souls damned to using CMake regularly, I can confidently say that it is slower, less maintainable, and less intelligible than make.
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lifthrasiir 786 days ago
No, CMake is a compatibility layer on top of existing task runners like make and ninja. I don't want a compatibility layer, and also CMake has even more features than make.
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qart 786 days ago
CMake is a (not the) correct answer according to the Ninja manual[1]. "Some explicit non-goals: convenient syntax for writing build files by hand. You should generate your ninja files using another program. This is how we can sidestep many policy decisions."

The other options are here: https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/wiki/List-of-generators...

[1] https://ninja-build.org/manual.html#_design_goals

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lifthrasiir 786 days ago
It is entirely correct that Ninja is technically designed for a related but different problem. But you can write Ninja by hand with some restrictions (I have done so for example), so bring back some of those sidestepped decisions may still be worthwhile.
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a1o 786 days ago
CMake is a very cool buildsystem that can do a lot, you can use it to run tests, fetch sources, and everything else. The documentation is the only thing that I find quite suboptimal, they could really add examples in there and better explain things. Or at least have list of projects that they believe are using CMake correctly so one can have some guidance. It took me five years before I was comfortable writing CMake from scratch.
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saghm 786 days ago
I had a boss who once quipped that CMake became much easier for him to understand and write once he realized it was just a really shitty version of BASIC with only global variables. (He later added "but two separate namespaces for them" because of the prevalent use of environmental variables as well as CMake-specific variables)
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greenavocado 786 days ago
We need something for CMake like what Elixir is to Erlang. I hate the syntax, fit, and finish but I am very thankful it exists.
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