The sour taste of C, or rather compiling

I hadn't been doing any *real* programming for the last few months (ladder logic for Allen-Bradley PLCs and some Python here and there), but this past weekend I wanted to try and compile ZSNES from the latest SVN snapshot. Also today at work I needed/wanted to compile libmodbus on Windows and make some test programs.

I am so sick of having to hunt down this and that when it comes to compiling crap. Some projects are pretty good about keeping everything flawless. I've compiled DOSBox, Octave, and Audacious from source numerous times throughout their different versions with minimal issues. Octave takes forever to compile and you see an occasional error, but I've always been able to compile, install, and use without problems.

Maybe I just suck at hunting down the errors, but f@$#%@. So sick of hunting down stuff, especially just to see it not work in the end. Sometimes compiling can be so smooth, and other times you have to beat your head into the wall.

Starting to see the real world appeal of higher level languages. I found modbus-tk on Google Code and was off and running in 20 minutes (with Python).

End rant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Epy

I am so sick of having to hunt down this and that when it comes to compiling crap.
(...)
Starting to see the real world appeal of higher level languages. I found modbus-tk on Google Code and was off and running in 20 minutes (with Python).

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I don't see how Python has any advantage here, other than the existence of common repositories for non-standard libraries, but you took the code directly from Google Code rather than by using pip (or easy_install etc) anyway. You could have run into problems with code written for different Python versions, or problems where the code was not properly tested and which are only caught at run time on rarely executed control flow paths.

Right, I understand it comes down to the specific piece of software, just saying it seems to happen more with C. In my case, referring to platform-specific routines adding to the complexity of the compiling process.

It all comes down to the size of your "built-in" libraries. With C, you don't have much by default (stdlib, a couple others depending on environment) so you have to spend time hunting them down.
Java is a fair bit easier in this regard, but you have to stomach several tens of megabytes of default libraries.
I've heard good things about Perl (or was I dreaming again? :rolleyes: ) with its CPAN providing a repository of libraries, if you need something specific it will find it for you.
Personally, I prefer being tight. Good documentation on library requirements for sources helps.

P.S. Mine are bigger than yours. ;)