In GNU’s Make manual, there’s a description of how to use one Makefile to call targets of another Makefile. You have to use $(MAKE) in order for it to work properly. I’ve found one little snag that’s not mentioned. If my target name is the same as the directory name where the other Makefile is, it will never work. It always says it’s up to date! If I change the target name, it works fine.

You have a bunch of related applications, each has their own Makefile that knows only about their own application, but you have dependencies where one app needs to be built before another. Here’s a skeleton bash script for building any one thing or everything.

#!/bin/bash

function build {
echo "*** …

It’s all about the design of the language and I agree with the author completely when he says, “Most languages have so much friction and awkwardness built into their design.”

I like it. It’s so simple and flexible. Define it with none, then assign sys.argv in place of argv.

Eclipse - The executable launcher was unable to locate its companion shared library. This problem is so generic, there’s a ton of things that could be wrong. It also depends on which OS you’re using!

Wow, there are a crap load of dependencies to build qpid, the AMQP client/server libraries for C++! What do you mean my architecture isn’t supported? Bah, whatever… Add ppc to the list or rip it out for now. Just build it and stop complaining!

I’ve heard the arguments for the agile developement method from people all for it and people who don’t care for it, and even people who just don’t care at all. I think it all boils down to the fact that the project management style and tools really just don’t matter. Pick a methodology and stick with it. Or better yet, choose what will work in your organization and take the best parts from several of the popular “fads” — use what works. The skills of the programmers matter more than which way you want to tackle planning, meetings, and management’s visibility.

Run system commands or call a sub-process and assign the return value to a variable. This makes it easy to pass the error up to your processes parent.

Install mercurial source control management system (sorry git lovers), and prerequisites. Set up by making some directories and exporting a variable or four. Clone the source repository. Let the building begin.

In the past i’ve used Eclipse, and that behemoth was a nightmare. The beast is a memory hog and just too bloated for my taste. Using plugins for php and python just make matters worse. I’ve always fallen back to vi (Vim) because of the severe headaches eclipse has caused me. hmm, I should sue… anyway, here’s the top reasons why Geany meets my criteria for the best code editor in the world…