Now if you're saying that the autotools/make/cmake/meson tooling is hard, I sort of agree, but many people are familiar with C build tools already. I don't see how it's easier or harder than learning language-specific tools.
>Now if you're saying that the autotools/make/cmake/meson tooling is hard, I sort of agree
That's not really the main problem to me but it is a problem.
>many people are familiar with C build tools already
Maybe if they're C++ programmers. I don't know anyone outside of the C++ community who has ever used anything aside from Makefiles and language-specific tooling.
>I don't see how it's easier or harder than learning language-specific tools.
The language-specific tools are typically very well integrated with the default testing, packaging, and editor tools ecosystem. The C build tools are not going to be, at least not for OCaml. Language-specific tools show users the best experience a language can offer. More advanced users can always choose to use something else, but the advantages of the whole community using the same tool are hard to beat as well.
I guess we know different developers. I work with Linux / C programmers, and everyone is familiar with the basic C build tools. C tools also deal with testing, and there's a very clear and well-travelled path from ./configure && make && make check && make DESTDIR=.. install to RPMs and Debian packaging.
That's the process for building and installing packages though. I'm talking about writing new ones, on a system with nothing else installed.
I'm omnivorous but I get paid for web development and that's what most people I know are most interested in. And like I said, they understand Makefiles and make, but autotools and Meson are not "basic C build tools," they're both extremely complex and relatively niche. I'm not saying you shouldn't use the tools you use, but you should understand that they are not popular or well-understood outside of your niche of Linux programming with C. I'm sure these programmers could learn how to use them, but most are going to choose not to if it's the easiest way to use the language. They will pick something else.
If you browse job listings, you might be surprised to find that the vast majority of jobs these days are not related to C or Linux development.
Companies are mostly building web and mobile applications, along with the corresponding web servers on the backend. JavaScript, Swift, Go, Java, Python - these are the kinds of languages developers are working with, and none of those languages normally are used with C build tools.
https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/d01ce082180c41...
Now if you're saying that the autotools/make/cmake/meson tooling is hard, I sort of agree, but many people are familiar with C build tools already. I don't see how it's easier or harder than learning language-specific tools.