Bug#639910: ITP: simple-build-tool -- bootstrapping
Hello,
There was a bioinformatics program I was considering packaging, but it
requires sbt to build and so I came across this ITP. I just have a
couple of comments on this bootstrapping situation.
On Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:29:09 +0100 Mehdi Dogguy <mehdi@dogguy.org> wrote:
> On 05/02/12 18:35, Josh Suereth wrote:
> > As I stated before, I feel requiring SBT to build without itself is
> > like trying to build Debian without GCC.
>
> Comparing this situation to "trying to build _gcc_ without _gcc_" would
> be a more fair comparison. (imho)
>
I think it is actually more like trying to build `make` without `make`.
In fact, GNU make provides a shell script to build `make` if you don't
have an existing version to use [1], so it seems like a fair approach to
take here. I don't think the sbt developers should consider it offensive
to do so.
Bootstrapping a compiler is necessary to otherwise avoid doing manual
work. The alternative to bootstrapping a build tool is not manual work,
but a different, maybe less efficient but still automatic approach.
Thanks and regards
Afif
1. http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/make.git/tree/build.template
--
Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
http://afif.ghraoui.name
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