Re: premake (was Re: autoconf / automake)

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Dimiter 'malkia' Stanev <malkia@gmail.com> writes:
> Has anyone considered using premake?
>
> It's written in "C" but extended through lua.
>
> http://industriousone.com/premake

Ugh, I've had the misfortune of encountering this with some Lua
package (IUP? I forget) -- it was not a pleasant experience.

As in ... "hmm, comes with makefiles, oops they don't even start to
work, maybe I need to regenerate them... hmmm, no obvious way of
specifying parameters ...oh, i need to write lua code... <45 min of
random grovelling, and no success; eventually give up trying to build
the package>"

[and note this was merely an attempt to _build_ the package as
distributed (I didn't modify anything), on a fairly common OS
(Debian).]

Maybe this was the package-writers fault and not premakes, but
although I love the idea of a Lua-based build-system, my experience
with premake didn't make it look like a very good implementation of
one....

Whatever gripes people have about autotools, configure scripts tend to
work out of the box on linux systems without much user input.  Other
systems like cmake/scons/jam/whatever have their own pluses and
minuses, but they also at least have the advantage (like autotools)
that they're popular, so tend to have the most obvious problems worked
out, and are reasonably well maintained.

-Miles

-- 
Opportunity, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.