Re: asynchronous make(1), anyone?

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 07:16:14AM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 11:38:08PM -0500, David Young wrote:
>  > >  > > [various scenarios that break the idea]
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > If the programmer has to be careful about order of saves, then it's 
> not
>  > >  > a robust solution.
>  > >  >
>  > >  > [...]
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > A robust solution has to deal with this.
>  > > 
>  > > While we might like to live in a universe where build environments are
>  > > constructed with ponies and rainbows, I don't think we actually do.
>  > 
>  > That's not very helpful, is it?
> 
> Neither is it particularly helpful to reply to concerns about
> fundamental aspects of an idea by dismissing them as implementation
> issues.

Some of the concerns are implementation issues, and some of the concerns
draw out the requirements.  Requirements:

        0 Save the programmer from making unnecessary keypresses
        1 Don't destroy the programmer's source files
        2 Don't demand that the programmer change their sequence
          of operations
        3 Don't distract the programmer
        .
        .
        .

> Your proposal is that the compiler should immediately start building
> anything I save, but somehow it has to avoid choking or distracting me
> if it reads a half-written save file, or if I've made linked changes to
> a number of files and save them in the wrong order, or if I've simply
> saved something out of the editor that's uncompilable because I'm not
> done hacking on it yet.

Right.

> It seems to me that there's inherently a *PONY HAPPENS* step required
> in the middle there.

Absolutely.  The way I see it, here is the difference between your
reply, and the replies from David Laight, der Mouse. : the other
replies assume that a team of ponies will be necessary to provide the
desired function, and they ask which ponies are really necessary, point
out which ponies are necessary but missing, tell which ponies are
already present, and so on.  Those replies are helpful.  The gist of
your response is "Be realistic, this is going to take a bunch of ponies
whose color, markings, and provenance we do not already know."  You've
told us that we need ponies, but we'd already established that, and
we're already counting the ponies that we do and do not have.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981