Re: Build systems suck. Can Lua be the basis for a better build system?

[Zé <jose.passes@...>]

On 03/08/2013 09:14 AM, Miles Bader wrote:
> The thing is, that_everybody_  realizes this, and_almost_  everybody's
> attempted solve it (at least since I've been aware of such things
> since the mid-80s).  "A better build system" is one of the classic
> programs most good programmers write at some point.
>
> Unfortunately here we are in 2012, with most make alternatives being
> only slightly less horrible, and usually having their own problems.
>
> The lesson I draw from this that it's a harder problem than people
> realize... :]
>
> Having a nice elegant small language like Lua as_part_  of a build
> system would of course be better than a grotty horrible language
> (cmake, etc), or a huge bloated one (python), but ... I'm not sure the
> language used is really the main issue...

I really doubt that.  Lua wouldn't be the first scripting language used 
for this stuff (it was already pointed out that it is in fact already 
used) and it certainly won't be the last.

The cycle goes something like:

1) ${technology} was adopted
2) specialized tools and automatic code generators for ${technology} 
were developed to help putting it to work
3) $[technology} failed in the eyes of some people, they started to look 
elsewhere
4) ${technology} = random(), goto 1)


By ${technology}, read any scripting language you can think of, as well 
as one of the multitude of domain-specific options which were developed 
since then, and slowly turn into ill-conceived full-blown scripting 
languages.