Annoying Build Systems

Many people complain about many build (and packaging) systems. This repo tries to collect the annoyances in a similar fashion to awesome lists.

To contribute, send pull requests. The Licence for this repo is CC0.

Builds Systems and their Annoyances

Ant

• Looks like Make with XML syntax

Bazel

• Can not have external dependencies

Buck

• Can not have external dependencies

Cabal

Cargo

• Assumes build machine is networked; no obvious way to pre-download dependencies and have them be used

CMake

• Custom language
• Lacking documentation
• "so huge and bloated, compilation takes longer than compiling GCC (!). It’s not even possible to create freestanding Makefiles, since the generated Makefiles call back into the cmake binary itself." source

Fabricate

Gradle

• Changes to build.gradle do not implicitly trigger rebuilds
• If you do not know Groovy the syntax can be confusing

Gyp

• JSON syntax with condition code as strings

Grunt

Jam

Make alone

• Recursive Make Considered Harmful
• Changes to the Makefile do not implicitly trigger rebuilds
• Dependencies on directories is not really possible
• Lots of output by default
• Rules with multiple output files are not really possible
• can't handle spaces in pathnames
• Uses a POSIX/bash shell, which hurts portability

Make with Autotools

• Obscure m4 macro language
• Posix-only
• Hard to debug because of generated code
• Configure does many unnecessary checks

Maven

• Restricting build lifecycle concept
• Throws Null Pointer Exceptions and gives a stack trace for simple errors such as missing parameters
• Verbose logs
• Uses XML (possibly annoying), does not support XML attributes (annoying)

Meson

MS Build

Ninja

• Very low-level
• All goals are treated as files (no equivalent to Make's PHONY)

NPM

• npm install can be dangerous
• Replicates transitive dependencies
• No way to specify test-only, build-only, debug-only, or CI-only dependencies (source)
• Native add-ons make artifacts non-portable

Pants

• Can not have external dependencies

Please

• No Windows support

Python Pip

• The requirements.txt can either contain the (small) set of direct dependencies or the set of all (transitive) requirements for better repeatability.

Redo

• build rules spread across many files

Rake

SBT

• Very slow
• Builds a directory tree on startup. If SBT is started in the / directory it runs out of memory
• Uses a hard to understand multilayered mutable execution model "The problems I discussed in this post are deep. These aren't things you can 'just send a PR' or 'just help them fix it'. They are fundamental to what SBT is."

Scons

• Too slow for larger projects (source)
• VariantDir is confusing

Shake

• Requires Haskell (GHC)

Shell Scripts

• Hard to port
• Hard to parallelize (thus slow)

Tup

• Can not have external dependencies

Waf

Xmake

Yocto

Yocto builds Linux distributions by invoking other build systems. It has many unique features:

• To use it, you must source a shellscript, breaking Fish compatibility.
• Officially supported distros are whitelisted: Its fakeroot implementation routinely breaks because Glibc is too new. Therefore, it must often be used in Docker or other containerization on unsupported distributions.
• Compiling the wrong code: There is a setting of whether to compile the local or remote copy of each repository, but changing the setting is not in all cases respected before a clean build is made.
• Flimsy developer essentials that regularly stop working: Yocto has a concept of a devshell: This opens a terminal (of all things) with the build environment set up in the build directory of a particular repository (for building only that one). Getting this working through Docker or other containerization really depends (if you're not careful, it may attempt to start X in your container, which will hang your existing X). As if its interactions with your Linux desktop isn't surprising enough as it is: You may be working in Konsole in an X session … but the devshell window that pops up is a Gnome-terminal in Weston in a different VT.
• If you try to work outside devshell: Pulling dependencies while building is a sure way to distract your edit-compile-debug cycle with unrelated breakages from elsewhere, as well as the occasional big change that takes ages to rebuild.
• Bitbake recipes:
  • Look like shellscripts with improper quoting. Disgust.
  • Have their own variables that look like shell variables. Confusing & error prone.
  • Use magically named flat variables instead of structured data. Requires disciplined adherence to documented best practices.