Video

I've heard good things about meson, but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. That will be coming in a future video...

I can consider making a video about generator expressions. They can be used for both single and multi-config generators. I don't particularly like generator expressions, because they're harder to reason about than the basic build script. They don't work with if/else, because the value in the generator only exists at generation time.

@@KeaSigmaDelta I can totally understand that, but it does seem like they work better for environments such as Visual Studio and others that are multi-config and I have no choice but to learn about them. Really frustrating.

@@default2043 Yes, they're unavoidable for multi-config generators with anything that is different on a per-config basis.

Sadly, AmigaOS 4's CMake port is rather old, so it's not usable for newer CMake scripts. GNU Make is more complicated, but once you've got a good template, then you can usually get it up and running relatively quickly. I have no trouble using it for large projects, because adding an extra source file to an existing makefile is very easy.

I'll try to look into this for you later, when I have time. in the meantime, try deleting your build sub-directory, and build it again from scratch.

I just tried building from scratch using the files I uploaded to the website, and it worked just fine. How are you trying to build it? Using CMake as per the ReadMe? Or did you try to create your own Visual Studio project? If it's the latter, then you need to link to RayLib 4.5.0. The CMake build script will download and build RayLib automatically.

@@KeaSigmaDelta oooh, I was using a version of Raylib that was newer, please give me a link to 4.5.0

@@KeaSigmaDelta I made it as my own visual studio project, using cmake. I had to comment out several functions from files in the third party folder without knowing why. Well now I know why, I downgraded to an older version of Raylib that didn't have the comments Raylib-cpp needed. I'll let you know if this works as soon as I can

@@KeaSigmaDelta and I still got that same error. Do you have a discord account so we can talk about this over there?

Those kind of initializers are a more recent C/C++ feature. Try telling your compiler to use the C++11 or C++17 standard. If you're using C instead of C++, then use the C99 standard. Here's how you do it in Visual Studio: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/overview/install-c17-support?view=msvc-170

@@KeaSigmaDelta Thank you very much! I'll let you know if this works tomorrow when I get more Work done! :3

You can use it on multiple platforms, including Windows. However, it's normally only used with GCC. I personally wouldn't use GNU Make with anything other than GCC.

@@KeaSigmaDelta We used it in 94 at a company that had 16 flavors of UNIX. You make is sound like nobody did it. I think that is wrong. I know you have to say stuff to make a point and sell cmake.

​@@wjrasmussen666 At no point did I suggest that nobody did it. I've personally used GNU Make on multiple platforms, including Windows. You're welcome to disagree with me. But, insinuating that I'm saying "stuff to make a point and sell cmake" is both overly cynical and rather insulting.

@@KeaSigmaDelta No you didn't but you did the left handed version of it. cmake does it.

@@wjrasmussen666 No, but believe whatever you want.

No plans for autotools, because I find it to be an absolute nightmare to use. Some people love to hate CMake, but it's a huge step up from autotools.

I personally prefer to either include dependencies directly in the repository, or use FetchContent (czcams.com/video/_5wbp_bD5HA/video.html). FetchContent will download and build a dependency if it isn't installed. Another alternative are package managers like vcpkg & conan. I don't use those myself (yet more external dependencies including package repositories).

Not that I'm aware of.

You're welcome.

That's the plan. I already have more in depth videos for cmake: czcams.com/play/PLORJX3OiHbbOBnj4l5boc1wayYg4wic0O.html

I might have a look at that later.

Very few C/C++ build systems have dependency management... Of course build systems have more features than mentioned in the video, but if you throw all of them at a beginner then they'll get overwhelmed.

@@KeaSigmaDelta you literally place what files to build in the script. whats that if not a dependency management.

@@DeathSugar That's simply telling it what files to compile & link to.

@@KeaSigmaDelta okay, whats dependency management is then? except for resolving system search paths to shove into compiler/linker options and installing them from some kind of registry, what else it is?

​@@DeathSugar Let's use the Rust language's dependency manager as an example. It's called "cargo." You tell it what external packages/libraries you need, and it'll fetch them from the internet and install them for you. It'll also install dependencies to those dependencies.

We'll see...

Great that it works for you.

Everything seems to be a psyop these days. At least this psyop is useful...

Meson is on the list. I've heard good things about it...

Thanks. The docs are usually written by people who "know too much," and therefore think that everything is obvious.

Part of it's probably habit, which started with older build systems. I do think the script looks cleaner when setting a variable for source-files, though. Plus it's easier to switch when you do get to the point that it becomes necessary.

Do you have an example script that can do it?

You certainly could try to use your preferred compiler on all platforms if you want. Do bear in mind that each platform has its preferred and best supported compiler toolchain, and using one of the others may come with issues. For example, I do use GCC on Windows, but have run into issues (e.g., certain APIs that aren't supported yet).

Comparing timestamps is basically how it's done. However, checking the timestamp of the source-file is *NOT* enough. You need to check if any of the source file's dependencies have changed too. So, you check the header files that it includes, then check the header files that those header files include, and again and again... You're better off using a build tool that already does the change detection rather than try to recreate it on your own.

@@KeaSigmaDelta Oh, so this is basically how makefile works? Plus dependancies and flags of course. Thanks, it really helps to understand makefile workflow better!

@@cycleoffire2220 Yes, although with makefiles you need to add some special code to get the dependency change tracking to work. I cover that in this video: czcams.com/video/_DOdoAJf17k/video.html (and will do so again in a future cmake vs make video)

Lua FFI is only of interest if you already have C code to call. You've listed a lot of different things. I suggest you pick one, and focus on that for now. My CMake Tutorial (cmaketutorial.com/) can help with compiling C/C++ code, but I don't have a beginners C/C++ tutorial (yet). Most people seem to recommend www.learncpp.com/. The Rust language has some good tutorials out there. I've heard about Zig, but have zero experience with it.

To aid you a bit, you shouldn't be aiming to learn languages, but programming concepts and c++ will help you with that, with c++ you could grasp most of the concepts in C & most other high level languages (Java, Python) and the rest, the underlying concepts are basically all the same, Difference is in C, you mostly have to work with algorithms, and higher level languages (APIs and framework's)

Don't freak out or see it as something so tedious or cumbersome, and don't also waste time trying to understand all the concepts, if you don't understand something move past it, as time goes on you'll get it for sure, might be years but you'll understand it. I understand some concepts 3 years later and still understanding concepts till date, most top programmers don't understand all the concepts..

@@chigoziethankgod9579 thank you for the advice, I have been programming with lua for almost 8 years, I’m struggling to find a job that’s why i need to learn other languages

It's refreshing to hear someone say they like CMake because some love to hate it. I found autoconf to be a nightmare, but got pretty good at using make.

You're welcome. Great to hear it's what you were searching for.

Some build systems are very extensible, so I doubt you'd ever get to that point. If you do, my recommendation would be to stop, and take some time to think about what you're doing and why. Are you making things more complicated than needed?

@@KeaSigmaDelta Well my current need is include modules(not c++ modules), libraries, etc into the build system, if they are needed by project. Only this might not make all the sense in the world, but I also want to know if a module is enabled or not so I can take different code paths (for example: "#if MODULE_XYZ_PRESENT") And my current approach is kinda extending CMake not a standalone build system. So I generate a CMake script at the end with all the required includes and defines

​I personally go for simplicity. So, I err strongly on the convention over configuration side. I want building my code to be easy too, not just the end program. This means minimal options/configurations. When adding more options I ask the question: "is the benefit of this feature/option worth the added complexity and future maintenance?"

@@KeaSigmaDelta Well, I think it's worth. It also means I don't need to write CMake that often which is nice.

@@paradox8425 Sounds good.

That's chicken egg problem. You need to compile that file to get your build details, unless you use some kinda weird cpp interpreter. Also that means build scripts can access everything and do everything which might be bad for security

@@paradox8425 i mean, you don't really need to have to have a complex build tool to compile a single file and run it, just a compiler plus it's not really any more unsafe than like, a makefile

@@fiona9891 It's usually not a single file tho. You use one for tests, one for each dependency, etc I mean you can run any arbitrary code in a cpp file. Literally anything

I think Jonathan Blow might be experimenting with a similar idea with Jai, a new programming language that he's working on.

@@paradox8425 yeah, but makefiles (and other common build systems) can execute programs on your computer, which means it can do basically anything a c program can like, theoretically you could make a makefile that writes a c program and compiles it then runs it, so i don't think it's necessarily any more unsafe plus, you can have your main build script build the other files once you execute it, so i think it can potentially still work in that situation (i'm not sure how unwieldy that would be, it's hard to say without seeing it in action, but i'm hoping it shouldn't be too bad and i think using the same language to build your project is a pretty massive benefit) it also means you don't really have to worry about someone having a different version of a build tool because the entire build tool is right there in your project, which you have to agree is pretty great

Yep. Just like this: xkcd.com/927/

Hehe. It was a plea straight from the heart...

I wish I had a video like this when I got started. As for your upcoming build system. I both wish you wouldn't, and wish you all the best. Maybe your one will finally be the one "that doesn't suck."

Glad you liked it!

Great! Thanks for the sub.

Thanks

Thanks.

I used to hate it too, but it has improved a lot.

I can't speak for any game studio. Nevertheless, a few possible reasons: - Most game studios don't write their own graphics engine, but use an existing one (e.g., Unity , Unreal Engine). Realistically, they can only support platforms that their chosen engine supports - Even if the game engine supports Linux, will there be enough gamers using Linux who would buy their game to justify the expense of porting?

I've been writing software for decades.

@@KeaSigmaDelta I would be very thankful if you explain a bit about the function and its parameters or why you're doing what you're doing.

@@friedrichmyers Which function are you asking about?

Hehe. Got that look...

Thanks. Keep working at it and you'll be able to make much bigger things.

Thanks. Great to hear that my content is helping you. I hope that The CMake Tutorial helps more people get started with C++.

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, Visual Studio is the name of the whole package, including the IDE, the compilers, etc.. While MSVC may be more precise, "Visual Studio" is more beginner friendly. People are more likely to have heard of "Visual Studio" than "Visual C++" or "MSVC."

I use a custom post-build command that adds a symbolic link to the data directory from the directory containing the compiled executable: # Create a symbolic link to the data directory after the project is built add_custom_command( TARGET ${PROJECT_NAME} POST_BUILD COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E create_symlink ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/Data/ $<TARGET_FILE_DIR:${PROJECT_NAME}>/Data/) You can do a similar thing for installing, except you'd probably want to copy the data files instead of creating a symbolic link.

@@KeaSigmaDelta thanks for the answer! Though I’ve met some problems myself with similar method. When you start your binary not from the source directory, but rather from the parent or some other directory (running from terminal for example), the assets are then discovered not from directory of the binary, but rather from directory where you run it in terminal. I’ve solved this by prepending argv[0] to the paths of assets. Maybe, I thought, there is more of an elegant solution.

@@kirillarionov123456 That's because your program is using the Current Working Directory (CWD) instead of checking what the program's actual directory is. Everything is fine when those two are the same, but it fails the moment those are different. You can get the program's actual path from argv[0]. From there you can get the program directory by chopping off the program's filename. After that, you want to convert it to an absolute path (because the CWD can change), and open all data files relative to that. NOTE: argv[0] may point to a symbolic link, in which case you'll want to follow that link to the program's actual directory.

@@KeaSigmaDelta ye, this is pretty much how I resolved it, thanks!

@@kirillarionov123456 Great!

Yes, but the situation is what it is...

@@KeaSigmaDelta windows always makes itself a pain compared to the Unixes.

@@happygofishing You can actually use Make on Windows with the GCC compiler. Theoretically, you could even use it with the Visual C++ compiler. However, Visual Studio's command line parameters are completely different to GCC's, so you'd have to supply parameters on a per-compiler basis.

@@KeaSigmaDelta this is what I'm saying, it would be very convenient for CL to move towards more GCC/CLANG command line parameters.

@@happygofishing It's never going to happen, because they'd have to break compatibility with all existing build scripts.

Thanks. I sort of go through the compilation process in the video about toolchains: czcams.com/video/9vw0iO6uwUk/video.html AFAIK, the layout of a program in memory is platform dependent (i.e,. different OSes organize things differently).

Great to hear that it's helpful.