From: bc@freeuk.com   
      
   On 25/10/2025 12:04, David Brown wrote:   
   > On 24/10/2025 20:50, bart wrote:   
      
   >> I was talking about all the stuff scrolling endlessly up to the screen   
   >> for a minute and a half while running the configure script and then   
   >> compiling the modules.   
   >>   
   >   
   > You are getting worked up about some text output that scrolled   
   > "endlessly" for a minute and a half?  (Do you spot the exaggeration   
   > here?)  Of course it is less of an issue for me - "./configure" took a   
   > mere 10 seconds on my ten year old machine.  But even at a minute and a   
   > half, it's just a task that the computer runs, once, and it is done   
   > without effort.  Try relaxing a little more, and perhaps use that minute   
   > and a half to stretch your legs or drink some coffee, rather than to   
   > build up a pointless fury.   
      
   The point about the minute and a half is that a fast compiler even on my   
   machine could translate tens of millions of lines of source code in that   
   time. If the app was actually that size (say, a web browser) then fine.   
      
   But the C source is only 0.07Mloc. So what TF is going on?   
      
   It appears that this is one of those apps that is superfically written   
   in 'C' but it actually relies on a plethora of other languages, files,   
   tools and myriad kinds of options. You can't just go into ./src and do   
   'gcc *.c'.   
      
   Even the makefile has to first be generated. There are files with .in,   
   .am and .m4 extensions. The eventual 'makefile' has 2000 lines of   
   gobbledygook, to build 49 C modules. (My projects are also around 40   
   modules; the build info comprises, funnily enough, some 40 lines.)   
      
   So this is a complicated build process! Unfortunately it is typical of   
   such products originating from Unix-Linux (you really want one term that   
   you can use for both).   
      
   This is not specific to CDECL; it's nearly everything that comes of   
   Unix-Linux. But this came up and I had a look.   
      
   But let me ask then about this particularly app (an interactive   
   text-based program where performance is irrelevant; it could have been   
   written in Python): do you think it would have been possible to   
   distribute this as a set of 100% *standard* C source files, with the   
   only dependency being *any* C compiler?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)