The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects • Hacker News Board

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#71

Post by jimktrains2 » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

jrimbault wrote: post #43

lucian1900 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like C is famous for having particularly good syntax. If anything, it's the worst thing about it.

They must have got something good though. Else why would there entire families of C-like languages ? Plus, to me C syntax is particularly good. You're writing real words and the computers does the things you tell it to. To the letter.

> They must have got something good though. Else why would there entire families of C-like languages ?

Network effect. If you wanted to write for unix, you almost had to use C originally.

> Plus, to me C syntax is particularly good.

It's meh. It's not the most straightforward when defining complex types like arrays or function pointers.

> You're writing real words and the computers does the things you tell it to. To the letter.

So yeah, about that...

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#72

Post by falcolas » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #28

rectang wrote: post #23

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie! We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace o…

Make is such a horrifically awful thing to work with that I just end up using a regular scripting language for building. Why learn another language with all its eccentricities and footguns when I already know several others?

Because, like many other things in programming, you'll end up with a half-baked and buggy implementation of make anyways.

Incremental builds by looking for changed dependencies, a configuration file with its own significant identifiers (i.e. a build DSL shoehorned into JSON or YAML), generalized target rules, shelling out commands, sub-project builds, dry runs, dependencies for your own script, parallelization, and a unique tool with (making an generalization here) insufficient documentation.

If you're really unlucky, you'll even end up with the equivalent of a configure.sh to transpile one DSL and run environment into the DSL for your custom tool.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#73

Post by monocasa » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #36

crescentfresh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilation is the act of going from one language to another, machine or not. This is what I was taught at least. "Machine code" or "bytecode" holds no special distinction. In this article's case, there a reasonable exception to made when JavaScript is being "compiled" into JavaScript itself. For that, I don't know what the term is (or if there even is one).

For that, I don't know what the term is (or if there even is one). Transpiler? Transpiler has been around as a term in CS for a while now. Initially it was used for compilers that compiled from one dialect of assembly to another.

That was retconned. They didn't call it a 'transpiler' at the time.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#74

Post by jayshua » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

The concepts behind make are quite good, but the interface it provides is not decidedly not. It reminds me of Git in that respect. I'd think replacing the opaque symbols used everywhere with more descriptive words would be helpful. I don't suppose anyone knows if modern Make versions support alternatives to $@, $%, $?, etc. that can be read rather than memorized?

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#75

Post by armitron » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #19

CMake is so nice compared to vanilla makefiles. I wonder if it can be used this way with Javascript.

Make may seem crude these days but has manageable complexity, I've never run across a build issue I could not debug. Its model is so simple, I can have it fully in my mind and be confident this is how it works. Moreover, this model simplicity allows me to build reliable systems on top of it.

CMake is a nightmare of implied complexity. I've run into multiple situations (usually but not always involving cross-compilation) where it was simply incomprehensible. No amount of time invested would let me figure out why CMake blew up. There is no way I can build something a little out of the ordinary on top of CMake and be confident that it's solid. It's just too complicated.

This sort of balancing, upfront ease of use vs hidden complexity comes up often and I have been burned enough in the past that experience dictates to pretty much always go for model simplicity and pay the upfront costs. I don't see this often however. A lot of the time people will go for what feels or looks right, superficially, without bothering to look beneath the surface or think about model complexity costs. It's an attitude that has led to many disasters in this space.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#76

Post by bsenftner » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

A long time ago, in a developer's paradise called the 1970's there was an automated build tool called "make".

It had this and only this syntax:

If a line begins at character 0, that is a list of files whose timestamps should be checked, if any are 'old', then execute the series of command lines beneath, identifying them as starting with a tab character.

That was it, the entire syntax of "make", and it was complete. Then some smart people fucked it up and we have that piece of shit we call "make" now.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#77

Post by jschwartzi » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

isaachier wrote: post #35

I started my career with C++ development and never used a direct makefile in any of my projects. When I write C/C++, I use CMake. My current job has me programming in Go where people seem to love makefiles, but I consistently find bugs in the implementation (usually has too many phony targets, etc.), Why don't people use makefile generators outside of the C/C++ community?

I don't use CMake for embedded systems because the syntax and options are even more obtuse for what I need to do with it. When I get down to it, every make-based build system I've ever used boils down to using the macro language to generate all the targets, and then building your output board image by dependencies. But it's the details of how to do this that vary widely depending on your application for the board.

CMake does a great job of compiling executable code and linking it using your compiler of choice, but where it falls flat is in giving me a convenient mechanism for fitting that executable into the system image.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#78

Post by maw » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #23

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie! We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace o…

Sort of related -- I'm sure this made it to HN when it was new -- is https://beebo.org/haycorn/2015-04-20_tabs-and-makefiles.html.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#79

Post by mturmon » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

gsaga wrote: post #26

Anyone here uses makefiles for anything other than compilation and build? One can use it to add some level of concurrency to shell scripts.

You can look at data reduction tasks as dependency networks. Generate/retrieve data, reduce data, plot data. If the intermediate artifacts are files, you can use make to run the data pipeline.

If part of the data changes, or new data arrives, you just run make again, and the whole pipeline re-does whatever is new. Very slick.

It has free concurrency (make -j N). I've used this effectively several times for medium-scale (~GBs) science data processing.

Re: The Makefile I use with JavaScript projects

#80

Post by markbnj » Wed, Feb 28, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #23

Make's interface is horrible. Significant tabs. Syntax which relies on bizarre punctuation... If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago had had the design acumen of a Ken Thompson or a Dennis Ritchie! We're stuck with Make because of network effects. I wish that it could just become "lost" forever and a different dependency-based-programming build tool could replace it... but that's just wishful thinking. The pace o…

> If only whoever authored Make 40 years ago

Make was created by Stuart Feldman at Bell Labs in 1976. The fact that it is still in use in any form and still being discussed here is a testament to what an amazingly good job he did at the time. Whether it is the right tool for any given modern use case is up to the people who decide to use it or pass it by. I still work with almost daily, and it's in wide use by backend system engineers if my experience is any guide. Yes, it's quite clunky but also quite powerful and reliable at the few things it does. Its also pretty much guaranteed to already be installed and working on every nix system, and that's not nothing.