C/C++ Devs No Longer Defend Their Build Systems, Just This Look

Description

A meme using a still of Brendan Fraser from 'The Whale': a heavyset man with a nasal oxygen cannula giving a weary, tearfully resigned, apologetic look. The caption above reads 'C/C++ devs dont even defend their build systems anymore, they just look at you like this'. The joke lands on the notorious state of C/C++ tooling - CMake's arcane DSL, autotools' m4 incantations, Makefiles, vcpkg/Conan fragmentation, and the absence of a standard package manager - contrasted implicitly with languages like Rust or Go whose single blessed toolchains spare developers this shame. Veteran C/C++ engineers have moved past denial and argument into pure, exhausted acceptance

Common Tags

Cpp BuildSystems BuildTools CFamilyLanguages PackageManagement DependencyManagement ToolingFrustration DeveloperFrustration

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick Stage five of CMake grief is acceptance; stage six is copying FindBoost.cmake from a 2014 Stack Overflow answer and never speaking of it again

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

Stage five of CMake grief is acceptance; stage six is copying FindBoost.cmake from a 2014 Stack Overflow answer and never speaking of it again
Anonymous

The build is portable; its trauma follows you to every platform.
bur del lago 6mo

can confirm i look like this
@Vincent_Hawks 6mo

shameless plug: see nob.h
1. @afdanilkin 6mo
  
  So are you the real Tsoding?
  
  @Vincent_Hawks 6mo
  
  nope, i'm just shilling him
  
  @afdanilkin 6mo
  
  Did not know this word. Seems quite useful, thanks 🙂
@q_rsqrt 6mo

i would die for my compile_and_run.bat
@chooisfox 6mo

Nah, cmake is amazing
1. @q_rsqrt 6mo
  
  saar cmake is amazing good saar
  
  @SamsonovAnton 6mo
  
  CMake still uses good ol' Make when it comes to the real deal. 🤓
  
  dev_meme 6mo
  
  ninja isn't make though, most of the companies I worked in are using it
  
  @SamsonovAnton 6mo
  
  My experience is exactly the opposite: despite I knew that Ninja is one of the backends for CMake from the very first time I met that build system, I don't recall any [open-source] project that actually uses Ninja instead of Make. 🤷‍♂ (I did encounter projects that use Ninja as a backend for Meson, though.)
  
  @b7sum 6mo
  
  although make is the default backend for cmake, ninja is actually quite popular
2. @Dark_Embrace 6mo
  
  Meanwhile users:
@b7sum 6mo

did you even read