On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 6:25 AM, Uriel <lost.gob...@gmail.com> wrote: > Why the fucking hell should the fucking build tool know shit about the > OS it is running on?!?!?! > > If you need to do OS guessing, that is a clear sign that you are doing > things *wrong* 99% of the time.
[In what follows by "OS" I mean kernel plus userspace libraries that provide a higher level interface to the hardware than runs in the kernel.] It would be great if "conceptual interfaces" that are a decade or more old were universally standardised (so you don't have to worry about whether mkstemp() is provided, etc) so that a lot of the configuration processing could go away, and maybe that's the situation for most "text and filesystem applications". But there are and are will be in the future new interfaces that haven't solidified into a common form yet, eg, webcam access, haptic input devices, accelerometers/GPS, cloud computing APIs, etc, for which figuring out what is provided will still necessary in meta-build/configuration systems for years to come for any software that will be widely distributed. -- cheers, dave tweed__________________________ computer vision reasearcher: david.tw...@gmail.com "while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." -- attempted insult seen on slashdot