3 posts tagged with "build systems"

It's that time of year once again! The ISO Committee published the summary of the results for the C++ Developer Survey "Lite". This has been running for several years and it's probably the first time we can start to see some trends... hopefully!

The survey results, with less than 1300 developers compared to 1700 last year, is only partially explained by third-party restrictions as noted by the blog post sharing the results. Regardless a wider sample would be ideal. The dominance of CMake with an 83% market share is striking. Could this 4% growth be linked to the lower burden for managing build scripts? Despite these limitations, the survey offers valuable insights into C++ ecosystem trends.

Since this blog is all about building and shipping C++ software, I'll be focusing on the tooling and ecosystem questions and results. There's a natural bias here, as I'm particularly interested in how these trends affect developers like us. But fear not, there's plenty for everyone! In fact, I'm curious what aspects other bloggers will delve into. Let's jump right in as there are some fascinating statistical correlations to explore!

Let's face it, in the land of C++ development, package management and reproducible builds can feel like oil and water. Package managers promise lightning-fast builds with pre-built libraries, while reproducible builds preach control and consistency by rebuilding everything. But here's the thing: they're not sworn enemies.

Think of it this way.

Let's start with the basic build system. Imagine you're spending hours compiling your code. You throw more cores at the problem, and the build time shrinks – but there's a limit. Eventually, adding more cores won't magically make it compile any faster. Now imagine you don't build at all. Poof! Your build time is divided by zero, because it's not happening at all, it's just not a factor anymore. The most reproducible builds are the ones you don't have to repeat endlessly. That's where package management comes in, saving you from endless build marathons. Yet there's even more benefits for reproducibility as well.

This post will explore how these two seemingly opposing forces can actually work together to create a streamlined and efficient development workflow. Despite being a new idea, there is evidence of this already being used along with potential new opportunities for future development in this space.

The most relevant problems for C++ developers are package management, setting up CI/CD pipelines, and maintaining build scripts. Talking to developers and builds teams the cause of that frustration is the lack of interoperability between build systems.

The Common Package Specification (CPS) aims to revolutionize C++ development by standardizing how dependencies are described. While the core concept holds promise, specific aspects raise questions about its practicality within the C++ ecosystem.