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- Visual Studio project files are XML files that are interpreted line by line, and can contain variables, branches, and loops. Hell on earth.
by Derbasti 10mo ago
- Visual Studio project files are XML files that are interpreted line by line, and can contain variables, branches, and loops. Hell on earth.
- Xelbair 10mo agowhat's even worse that schema uses extremely generic types with attributes denoting actual type. Makes reading it even harder, and any possible constraints due to type safety go out of the window, so we get worst of both worlds.
- spooky_deep 10mo agoHorrible. Would’ve been much nicer if they’d reached for Scheme.
- debugnik 10mo agoYou say that, but people in OCaml keep bemoaning the use of mostly declarative s-expressions in the Dune build system. Imagine the reaction if MSBuild used an actual Scheme.
- spooky_deep 10mo agoThey don’t know how good they really have it :)
- jimbokun 10mo agoWhy doesn't the OCaml build system use OCaml?
- spooky_deep 10mo agoYou don’t want a language with non-determinism, arbitrary IO, impure functions etc. for build configuration ideally. I guess the answer to your question is OCaml has unmanaged side effects.
- pjmlp 10mo agoThey are badly copied Ant build files. Ant came first, then when Microsoft redid the VS project format, they created MSBuild. As incredible as it may sound, Ant is still easier to deal with than MSBuild.
- giamma 10mo agoAnt did not include IF THEN ELSE, unless you added the contrib package. If you understood the paradigm, you could write branches in Ant files simply using properties and guards on properties ("unless"). Using IF in Ant was basically admission of not having understood Ant. This said, I used Ant for a very limited amount of time.
- pjmlp 10mo agoIt sure did, you use conditions, no need for contrib. https://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/condition.html https://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/condition.html The else part is easily done by repeating and negating the condition. Two other advantages of Ant that MSBuild lacks in a sane way to this day, are macros, and proper documentation.
- bokchoi 10mo agoAs of Ant 1.9.1, you can use 'if' and 'unless' attributes on any task or element in a target. I stopped using Ant a long time ago, but this was a pleasant discovery when I had to pick up an old Ant based project recently. https://ant.apache.org/manual/ifunless.html https://ant.apache.org/manual/ifunless.html
- pjmlp 10mo agoNice, I was basing my answer on what was there initially. I always liked Ant, as I don't suffer from XML allergy.
- giamma 10mo agoI agree, that is what I meant: there were people who installed Contrib to have <if> element, but in reality you did not need that you could just use Ant's built-in features like you said. In my opinion installing Contrib to use <if> was a demonstration of not having understood how Ant works.
- shevy-java 10mo agoWesnoth the game also has that via WML. Looks very ugly and obfuscated.