Re: [Mingw-users] Stop on first error?

[Earnie <ea...@us...>]

Peter Rockett wrote:
>
>> So, you think it necessary to provide a GUI installer for a product which
>> is designated for CLI use?  If a user can't type (at a CLI prompt):
>>
>>      mingw-get install foo
>>
>> how do you expect them to manage:
>>
>>      gcc -o foo.exe foo.c
>>
>> (or the more complex sequence of commands typical of a real project)?
>
> 1) I can honestly say in many years of using various C(++) compilers, I
> have never once invoked a compiler from the CLI! (Apart from indirectly
> via make files.)  I have only ever used an IDE for my own projects.
> Everybody I know uses an IDE. I suppose there must be command-line
> warriors left but they're surely a dying breed.
>

I hate IDE as much or more than you dislike CLI.  For one thing the IDE 
hides things that you need to know.  You need to think about that 
program you're creating and using an IDE hides much of the interaction 
of the libraries.  But then I am one of the dying breed who started IT 
life with 32K words of memory to execute a program in.  I had to write a 
file for the linker to code in what object files to have in memory to 
satisfy the dependencies for other object files being used.  Now we need 
4G memory just to run the OS and do something productive.  I blame the 
lazy ones who use the IDE for this creep of memory usage.

> 2) Typing mingw-get install foo once isn't the problem. It's the fact
> that you have to type mingw-get install umpteen times (for gmp, mpfr,
> mpi, etc.) to get the toolchain working. If you want ada or fortran
> there's other stuff to type. Of course this could all be usefully
> automated in batch files, one for the base C compiler, one for C++,
> another for C and fortran, etc., etc.  That gives a 1-from-N choice
> where N is a large number. A GUI is an obvious way to solve that
> 1-from-N problem...
>

Actually, you just install the toolchain you want and the dependencies 
will be installed for you.  So the meta data for mingw-get could have a 
"toolchain" called Fortran and the meta data for the "toolchain" would 
know which packages were needed to be installed.  I don't see that as 
too much of a hardship.  The problem becomes the creation of the 
"toolchain" meta data just like when I was telling the linker what 
objects to have in my 64K bytes of memory.  Someone has to type rather 
than clicking or dragging and dropping in a GUI.

Anecdote: A GUI is for those without a CLUI.

-- 
Earnie
-- http://www.for-my-kids.com