Re: Compiling Emacs from Source

[Emanuel Berg]

Dan Mack wrote:

> My two cents [...] YMMV

If that's your two cents, one sure gets curious
whatever gold bullions must be in your family
safe...

Indeed, compiling from source isn't difficult.
The reason it is an elite/hacker hangup isn't
because of the level of difficulty, rather the
perfectionist/OCB approach. And, some people
actually benefit from it as well :)

In general, compiling an individual piece of
software isn't difficult. The package manager
and their interfaces are 1) a shorthand for
doing it with less effort and with a uniform
interface, which (both) are always welcome; and,
more importantly 2) handle the complexity that
rises when all those software pieces hook
together in different ways - different
versions, the compile order, circular
dependencies, and what have you.

The complexity itself isn't difficult to
understand either. Just try to write any piece
of software, say a small Elisp file that does
some variation of what is already there. OK, so
you write that. "Sweet, I'll just put it on my
lamer web pile so Joe, Fritz, and Ivan Hackers
all over the world can use it." Only it isn't
completely standalone as it needs a one-liner
which you have in another file which has
nothing to do with the first file! So you
factor it out to a library. Now this breaks
both files for anyone not having that library -
yeah, "library", like 2-3 lines of codes!
So you put in a comment "; hey guys, you need
to get this as well" so already an all-but
trivial project starts to tangle up. Guess what
with huge software systems developed for half
a century (soon).

So the complexity is in one sense similar to
compiler optimization. Recurrent values are
factored out, unused variables dropped - so
easy, an idiot can do it. Or at least
understand it. But a computer can do it in
close to zero time and it doesn't matter how
big the project gets, the result will be just
as good as those simple cases are applied again
and again...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573