Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Keith Thompson Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: New and improved version of cdecl Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2025 13:20:45 -0700 Organization: None to speak of Lines: 82 Message-ID: <87h5vo1276.fsf@example.invalid> References: <87bjlyobts.fsf@example.invalid> <10dbvqs$12d0f$1@dont-email.me> <10dd0fj$1jbcv$1@dont-email.me> <87jz0l2pal.fsf@example.invalid> <10dei5s$28h93$1@dont-email.me> <8734792h4y.fsf@example.invalid> <10dfusd$2k0q4$1@dont-email.me> <10dgdc7$2of3m$1@dont-email.me> <10dghp5$2q30g$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2025 20:20:46 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="69089273d8ad8cb61d3f6cd6f642af28"; logging-data="2996088"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/h8PTtdMWq+r2NFlKI1qA9" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:la7QOTantrTwC9wfYhEowpkTwyg= sha1:B/WeX/mN8AeXH70IsUR4OBU8gGM= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:394718 bart writes: > On 24/10/2025 18:35, David Brown wrote: >> On 24/10/2025 15:27, bart wrote: >>> On 24/10/2025 03:00, Keith Thompson wrote: >>>> bart writes: >>>>> On 24/10/2025 00:04, Keith Thompson wrote: >>>>>> bart writes: >>>> [...] >>>> >>>> I note that you've ignored the vast majority of my previous article. >>> >>> I've noted it, but chose not to reply. You have a point of view and >>> attitude which I don't share. >>> >>> Mainly that you don't care how complicated a program for even a >>> simple task is, and how laborious and OS-dependent its build >>> process is, so long as it (eventually) works. >>> >>> That it favours your own OS, leaving users of other to have to jump >>> through extra hoops, doesn't appear to bother you. >>> >> Why would someone care what how someone else writes their code, or >> what it does, or what systems it runs on?  They guy who wrote cdecl >> gets to choose exactly how he wants to write it, and what systems it >> supports. We others get it for free - we can use it if we like and >> it if it suits our needs.  But neither Keith nor anyone else paid >> that guy to do the work, or contributed anything to the task, and we >> have no right to judge what he choose to do, or how he choose to do >> it. > > This a curious argument: it's free software so you don't care in the > slightest how efficient it is or how user-friendly it might be to > build? Its efficiency is not a great concern. I've seen no perceptible delay between issuing a command to cdecl and seeing the result. No, I don't much care what it does behind the scenes. If I did care, I might look through the sources and try to think of ways to improve it. But the effort to do so would vastly exceed any time I might save running it. The build and installation process for cdecl is very user-friendly. It matches the process for thousands of other software packages that are distributed in source. I can see that the process might be confusing if you're not accustomed to it. If you *asked* rather than just complaining, you might learn something. The stripped executable occupies about 0.000008% of my hard drive. > This is a program that reads lines of text from the terminal and > translates them into another line of text. THAT needs thirty thousand > lines of configure script?! And that's even before you start compiling > the program itself. The configure script is automatically generated from "configure.ac", which is 343 lines, 241 lines if comments and blank lines are deleted. I've never written a configure.ac file myself, but most of it looks like boilerplate. It would probably be fairly easy (with some experience) to create one by modifying an existing one from another project. > I'm thinking of making available some software that does even less, > but wrap enough extra and POINTLESS levels complexity around that > you'd need to lease time on a super-computer to build it. But the > software is free so that makes it alright? Free software still has to be usable. cdecl is usable for most of us. [...] > I was talking about all the stuff scrolling endlessly up to the screen > for a minute and a half while running the configure script and then > compiling the modules. Why is that a problem? If you like, you can redirect the output of "./configure" and "make" to a file, and take a look at the output later if you need to (you probably won't). [...] -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */