Re: [Libmesh-devel] Still Really Dislike Automake

[Paul T. B. <ptb...@gm...>]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 3:44 PM Derek Gaston <fri...@gm...> wrote:

> Both of you claim to use these features - fine - I believe that you do...
> but how many others?
>
> However, it's obvious that you're both passionate about these... so I will
> relent and agree that whatever build system we come up with has to have
> these features.  Fine.
>

Thank you.


> Can you agree with me that the current build system adds friction for
> everyone that doesn't use these features?
>

To a degree. I agree that having to individually specify a file in the
build system to be added is stupid and shouldn't be needed. I do not agree
that out-of-source builds, make install, make check, make dist, make
distcheck adds any friction. You can do an in-source build and do all of
those things. There is no friction. I agree that it should be easier to add
an example.


>   I think you guys are so used to how slow and laborious it is that you
> don't even realize how much better it could be.
>
> This happened the other day with John and I: I was complaining about how
> slow "make install" is for libMesh.  John said "what do you mean, seems
> fine to me"... after a bit of chatting it was clear that he was just so
> used to it that it didn't phase him (he just types "make install" and let's
> it do its thing)... but that doesn't mean that the inefficiency doesn't
> exist!
>

I would love to see how it could be sped up. The vast majority of time in
make install is spent in linking the library and there's no getting around
that.


>
> Derek
>
> On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 3:15 PM Roy Stogner <roy...@ic...>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Derek Gaston wrote:
>>
>> > I would rather fix the core development cycle - then backfill features
>> based on priority (install > check > dist > out-of-tree, etc.)
>>
>> out-of-tree > install > check > dist.
>>
>> > completely chucked a sane development flow for the sake of a few
>> features that are rarely actually used.
>>
>> By "rarely" do you mean "literally all the time, for years,
>> indispensibly"?  Being able to easily build multiple configurations of
>> the same working tree is incredibly useful.  The inability to do this
>> as easily with MOOSE has cost in man-hours of both workarounds (when I
>> maintain multiple trees to test different software stacks) and errors
>> (when I don't have room to do so or time to go back-and-forth and one
>> configuration or stack regresses).
>> ---
>> Roy
>>
>