[geeks] What is going on with the open source community ...the stupid bastards are clueless

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Apr 27, 2008, at 00:37 , Michael C. Vergallen wrote:

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> Hi,
>
> A starting to wonder why the Open Source developers are so enamoured
> with the use of libtool, automake & autoconf.

I like to call it "open sores" sometimes.

Lot's of good software of course, but most of it is crap.

Unfinished, poorly designed, massively redundant with other projects,  
or politically crippled.

The whole GNU build toolset is really bad.

I've never ceased to be totally confused by autoconf/configure/blah  
whatever you call it, and I have books on it and have used it for years.

One reason it came about is because of the massive steaming mound of  
crap that so much software depends on these days.  I think a lot of  
the reason for the GNU auto tools is to try and tame that beast.

> Also when you tell them they don4t use pointers in the right  
> way...they
> imsult you like you are a stupid bastard. They jsut write their code  
> in
> a bad way and because it works for them with gcc they think it works  
> on
> every system.

You mean, gasp and shudder, GNU C isn't always perfect?  :)

Unfortunately, it is the only game in town that runs almost everywhere  
and is reasonably good.

I've looked through the code and never even made an attempt to  
understand it.  I don't know much about writing compilers, but the  
code looks pretty awful to me.

It's too bad we can't have another set of tools and compilers,  
maintained a little better, and without the political strings attached.

-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."