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Rather than a flow chart, etc. It would better to convert the utilities to simple C with no error handling or optimization. So `cat` would be about 5 lines. No mmap() or fancy stuff.
I've been trying to contribute additional flags for some coreutils commands, but I've been having trouble building on macOS. Should I use a certain VM or container instead? Does anyone have a link to instructions for building on a mac?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, this would be very beneficial to students and people learning C.
I have used the source code for Plan 9's core utilities as a teaching aid for students learning the basics of C and operating systems to great effect. I have found GNU's tools to contain a lot of "cruft" to make them run fast, which is not necessarily conducive for those who are not familiar to why they work.
I'm not particularly interested in coreutils per se but this is a super-interesting way to look at any piece of software. I just _love_ the block diagrams... why can't source code look like this? Great work!
There are languages that model code like this. Using one for a while will likely teach you why. If you think "spaghetti" is an apt description for text code, wait until you see flow based code that's evolved in place for a while.
It’s my opinion that one of the things that turns visual code into spaghetti is that refactoring is difficult, because the code grows in 2d, as opposed to 1d (I don’t count line length). It’s sort of like if you could have infinitely many columns of concurrently executing code in text a based function, where any line in a given column can be connected to any line in a different column.
I think what could be useful is a hybrid model, where you have something like text based modules whose communication is orchestrated by a visual diagram. For what it’s worth, Simulink can be used like this to some extent(e.g., hooking S-functions together) and I find it orders of magnitude more pleasant than labview.
I've been trying to contribute additional flags for some coreutils commands, but I've been having trouble building on macOS. Should I use a certain VM or container instead? Does anyone have a link to instructions for building on a mac?
Do you have a modern GCC installed?
$ gcc -v
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.46.4)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin18.6.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/binEarlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a modern GCC installed?
$ gcc -v Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1 Apple LLVM version 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.46.4) Target: x86_64-apple-darwin18.6.0 Thread model: posix InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/…
Rather than a flow chart, etc. It would better to convert the utilities to simple C with no error handling or optimization. So `cat` would be about 5 lines. No mmap() or fancy stuff.
I'm not particularly interested in coreutils per se but this is a super-interesting way to look at any piece of software. I just _love_ the block diagrams... why can't source code look like this? Great work!
There are languages that model code like this. Using one for a while will likely teach you why. If you think "spaghetti" is an apt description for text code, wait until you see flow based code that's evolved in place for a while.
Perhaps I'm imagining an alternative way to manage source trees, or modules, rather than the code in individual source files. A hierarchy like a traditional file system but with extra kinds of relationships. Perhaps it'd have to be curated like reference documentation, perhaps it could be automatically generated from source directives. I dunno, just idle thoughts...