[ale] [OT] Learning C

[Alex Carver]

On 2015-12-15 13:40, Michael Potter wrote:
> I have given up on make for any new project.
> scons is the way to go for C based projects.
> 
> Here is why:
> 1) the rule file is just python.  So you have a rich well documented syntax
> to follow.
> 2) scons knows about .h and .c file relationships by scanning code.  You
> don't have to code the relationships yourself.
> 3) it supports "out of source" builds.
> 4) it uses checksums rather than timestamps to determine that a file
> changed.
> 5) it knows when rules change and will recompile because a rule changed.
> 6) you can write customer builders in python.

Scons is awful for systems that have limited resources because you have
to have an entire python interpreter laying around just to run it.

I ran into this issue on several embedded systems.  I was having a hard
time getting cross platform compiling working (another thing that scons
has trouble with) but I couldn't compile on the native system because
the program author used a version of python I couldn't get (or get
working) and all the python libraries used the available storage leaving
nothing for the rest of the system.  At least make is fairly trim.