Re: Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > As far as I know, Emacs does not provide a convenient way to use build
  > systems,

Isn't "use build systems" what M-x compile does?
Assuming that each bui;d system provides a shell command to invoke it,
M-x compile can run that command and build the package.

It can also parse the error messages and find the loci of problems.
GNU tools use our standard format for error messages, but M-x compile
handles various others.  We want to extend it to handle whatever
formats are useful to handle.

Let's not duplicate what we already have.  If we implement facilities
to do other jobs, let's make them work with what we already have.

  > • It requires to set it up manually

It requires setting up, but that doesn't have to be done manually.
Whatever code is used to set things up, a Lisp program can call
that and then call M-x compile.

  > • You cannot have a choice, like `cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release'
  >    or `cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug'

Surely we can do any of these things in code that would call M-x ocmpile

  > • There is no (convenient?) way to have a configuration phase and a
  >    compilation phase.  (like `cmake ..' followed by `make')

If you implement something fancier that runs two build programs,
it can use M-x compile once to run the first, and call M-x compile
again to run the second.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)