From: david.brown@hesbynett.no   
      
   On 24/10/2025 15:27, bart wrote:   
   > On 24/10/2025 03:00, Keith Thompson wrote:   
   >> bart  writes:   
   >>> On 24/10/2025 00:04, Keith Thompson wrote:   
   >>>> bart  writes:   
   >> [...]   
   >>   
   >> I note that you've ignored the vast majority of my previous article.   
   >   
   > I've noted it, but chose not to reply. You have a point of view and   
   > attitude which I don't share.   
   >   
   > Mainly that you don't care how complicated a program for even a simple   
   > task is, and how laborious and OS-dependent its build process is, so   
   > long as it (eventually) works.   
   >   
   > That it favours your own OS, leaving users of other to have to jump   
   > through extra hoops, doesn't appear to bother you.   
   >   
      
   Why would someone care what how someone else writes their code, or what   
   it does, or what systems it runs on?  They guy who wrote cdecl gets to   
   choose exactly how he wants to write it, and what systems it supports.   
   We others get it for free - we can use it if we like and it if it suits   
   our needs.  But neither Keith nor anyone else paid that guy to do the   
   work, or contributed anything to the task, and we have no right to judge   
   what he choose to do, or how he choose to do it.   
      
   >   
   >   
   > Well I built cdecl too, under WSL. Jesus, that looked a lot of work!   
      
   I have no experience with WSL, so I can't comment on the effort there.   
   For my own use on a Linux system, I had to install a package (apt-get   
   install libreadline-dev), but that's neither difficult to do, or   
   time-consuming, and it was not hard to see what was needed.  Of course,   
   a non-programmer might not have realised that was needed, but if you are   
   stumped on a configure script error "readline.h header not found, use   
   --without-readline" and can't figure out how to get "readline.h" or   
   configure the program to avoid using it, and can't at least google for   
   help, then you are probably not the target audience for cdecl.   
      
   >   
   > However, it took me a while to find where it put the executable, as the   
   > make process doesn't directly tell you that. It seems it puts it inside   
   > the src directory, which is unusual. It further appears that you have to   
   > do 'make install' to be able to run it without a path.   
   >   
      
   I agree that putting the executable in "src" is a little odd.  But   
   running "make install" is hardly unusual - it is as standard as it gets.   
     (And of course there are a dozen other different ways you can arrange   
   to run the programs without a path if you don't like "make install".)   
      
   > (Yes, I did glance at the readme, but it is a .md file which I didn't   
   > notice, and in plain text it looked unreadable.)   
   >   
      
   I agree that this README.md file is unusually clumsy when viewed as   
   plain text - part of the point of Markdown is that it can be easily read   
   and written as plain text.  But github shows the readme in nicely   
   rendered html, so it's hardly a big issue.   
      
   > When I did run it, then while it had a fair number of options, it didn't   
   > appear to do much beyond converting C declarations to and from an   
   > English description.   
   >   
      
   It seems to be quite a flexible program, with a number of options.   
      
   > That program is 2.8 MB (10 times the size of my C compiler).   
      
   First, as usual, nobody cares about a couple of megabytes.  Secondly, if   
   you /do/ care, then you might do at least a /tiny/ bit of investigation.   
     First, run "strip" on it to remove debugging symbols - now it is a bit   
   over 600 KB.  By running "strings" on it, I can see that about 100 KB is   
   strings - messages, rules, types, keywords, etc.   
      
   Considering that it supports C from the dark ages up to C23, C++ up to   
   C++26 (with each standard along the way), lots of extensions - including   
   MS stuff - as well as macro expansion tracing, I don't think the program   
   sounds at all excessive in size.   
      
   >   
   > I guess you don't care about that either. But surely, you must be   
   > curious about WHY it is so big? You must surely know, with your decades   
   > of experience, that this is 100 times bigger than necessary for such a   
   > task?   
      
   Were you not curious, or did you just pull random sizes out of thin air   
   as an excuse to complain again about any program written by anyone else   
   but you?   
      
   It is entirely possible that your little alternative is a useful program   
   and does what you personally want and need with a smaller executable.   
   But cdecl does a great deal more, doing things that other people need   
   and want (like handling C++ declarations - surely 100 times more effort   
   than handling C declarations, especially the limited older standards you   
   use).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)