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Recursive make considered harmful.

Did anybody notice that Microsoft's main nemesis Eolas is one of the sponsors of this conference? I wonder if the Microsoft guy even knows that.

My impression is that they're more compliant with Unix specs (as in OpenGroup).
Some BSD developers have a thorough understanding that programming in C is dangerous and have implemented savefty nets around that fact (see Exploit Mitigation Techniques, see a recent discussion on Kernel Trap about OpenBSD's memory allocation :http://kerneltrap.org/node/5584)

I guess inserting a few words that sound like your're a real genius, like "immunological system" will promote their anti-virus software, won't it? Even though it doesn't resemble it in the least.

Who are these guys kidding? They're part of the problem. They make obscene ammounts of money on a diseased platform (now there's a good biological metaphor).

If they were really up to it, they'd be working on cutting-edge stuff like capabilities. Even relatively simple measures like those taken by some UNIXes have succeeded more than that Windows PR BS. Of course, that would mean ditching Windows, and that's a real stupid choice for the money-makers/user-pimps.

1. Keep using make
2. Use included makefiles instead of recursive makes. See Recursive Make Considered Harmful
3. You can of course specify the build commands individually for each target. However you can also make per-target modifications to implicit rules using e.g. '+=' syntax (you are using GNU make, aren't you?)
4. You'll need to run the .d files through some heavy scripting, but you can get them to behave in the presence of generated files

ESR has given us a compelling essay on the benefits of communal non-property. He has enriched our lives with a collection of stirring poetry. He has left an electronic legacy of just how gruesome the human form can get. And he has given every underdog geek hope with an inspiring account of his meteoric rise to unheard of riches.

But none of these compares to his Sex Tips for Geeks. After all, if these tips can get ESR into some hottie's pants, then any disgusting slob can get laid!

Seriously, though, how could ESR have developed these valuable mating tips? Nobody can make me believe that even if he offered all of his newfound wealth to the most hard-up crack-whore on the streets of New York he could get his stinger wet. My Philosophy professor always said, "you cannot invoke magic or God and expect to win an argument in this class." I am therefore left to reach only one possible conclusion. What follows is the only possible explanation for ESR's Sex Tips for Geeks.

The room was dark and the night was cold as the rain pelted against the window. Eric paid no attention, though, absorbed as he was in the warm glow of his computer monitor. A raspy voice grated out of the speakers situated on either side of his monitor, "you've got mail!"

It was his mother's voice, which he had recorded to use with the perl AOL interface he had been working on for the past 10 years. Eric smiled and wiped the sweat condensing in his palm on his thin swatch of hair, only to replace the sweat with the grease oozing from his scalp. His hands shaking, Eric simultaneously pressed the ctrl, alt, shift, F1 and page down keys to retrive the new mail message. He read the message allowed, his voice quivering with excitement.

"hi! i will meet with u on chat 7pm tonite! c u then, xoxoxoxo suzee."

Eric expunged a bulb of gas from his spastic bowel as he checked his watch. 6:57 pm. His shaking grew more extreme, more uncontrollable. He could barely press the key sequence alt, space, F10, F3, tab, scroll-lock, page-up and end to bring up his open-source AOL chat client. Eric was barely able to situate his notebook and ink his quil before the chat client began to load. Eight minutes later, the client was ready to go.

"hi eric," came the message.

Eagerly, Eric replied, "hi, suzee! how r u tonite?"

"fine, thanks. u r late! i wuz worried!"

Eric scribbled in his notebook, "women like promptness."

"i am sorry :( what did u do today?"

"it's ok..."

"Politeness goes a long way," he wrote.

"... i got in trouble in school becuz i hit this guy becuz he kept pulling my hair :("

"No hair-pulling," he noted.

"so. what grade r u in?" Suzee asked.

Eric blushed. The large beads of sweat began to roll down his face to fall on his keyboard. He wiped his forhead with his hand and picked up more grease from his thin red hair. Shaking, he replied to Suzee, "i am not in school n e more."

"that is kool! what do u do then?"

"Girls like men who are no longer in school," He scribbled, before replying.

"i write about my newfound riches and how open-source is a superior method of software development."

There was a long pause. Eric's leg began to shake nervously. A

ESR has given us a compelling essay on the benefits of communal non-property. He has enriched our lives with a collection of stirring poetry. He has left an electronic legacy of just how gruesome the human form can get. And he has given every underdog geek hope with an inspiring account of his meteoric rise to unheard of riches.

But none of these compares to his Sex Tips for Geeks. After all, if these tips can get ESR into some hottie's pants, then any disgusting slob can get laid!

Seriously, though, how could ESR have developed these valuable mating tips? Nobody can make me believe that even if he offered all of his newfound wealth to the most hard-up crack-whore on the streets of New York he could get his stinger wet. My Philosophy professor always said, "you cannot invoke magic or God and expect to win an argument in this class." I am therefore left to reach only one possible conclusion. What follows is the only possible explanation for ESR's Sex Tips for Geeks.

The room was dark and the night was cold as the rain pelted against the window. Eric paid no attention, though, absorbed as he was in the warm glow of his computer monitor. A raspy voice grated out of the speakers situated on either side of his monitor, "you've got mail!"

It was his mother's voice, which he had recorded to use with the perl AOL interface he had been working on for the past 10 years. Eric smiled and wiped the sweat condensing in his palm on his thin swatch of hair, only to replace the sweat with the grease oozing from his scalp. His hands shaking, Eric simultaneously pressed the ctrl, alt, shift, F1 and page down keys to retrive the new mail message. He read the message allowed, his voice quivering with excitement.

"hi! i will meet with u on chat 7pm tonite! c u then, xoxoxoxo suzee."

Eric expunged a bulb of gas from his spastic bowel as he checked his watch. 6:57 pm. His shaking grew more extreme, more uncontrollable. He could barely press the key sequence alt, space, F10, F3, tab, scroll-lock, page-up and end to bring up his open-source AOL chat client. Eric was barely able to situate his notebook and ink his quil before the chat client began to load. Eight minutes later, the client was ready to go.

"hi eric," came the message.

Eagerly, Eric replied, "hi, suzee! how r u tonite?"

"fine, thanks. u r late! i wuz worried!"

Eric scribbled in his notebook, "women like promptness."

"i am sorry :( what did u do today?"

"it's ok..."

"Politeness goes a long way," he wrote.

"... i got in trouble in school becuz i hit this guy becuz he kept pulling my hair :("

"No hair-pulling," he noted.

"so. what grade r u in?" Suzee asked.

Eric blushed. The large beads of sweat began to roll down his face to fall on his keyboard. He wiped his forhead with his hand and picked up more grease from his thin red hair. Shaking, he replied to Suzee, "i am not in school n e more."

"that is kool! what do u do then?"

"Girls like men who are no longer in school," He scribbled, before replying.

"i write about my newfound riches and how open-source is a superior method of software development."

There was a long pause. Eric's leg began to shake nervously. A

But none of these compares to his Sex Tips for Geeks . After all, if these tips can get ESR into some hottie's pants, then any disgusting slob can get laid!

Seriously, though, how could ESR have developed these valuable mating tips? Nobody can make me believe that even if he offered all of his newfound wealth to the most hard-up crack-whore on the streets of New York he could get his stinger wet. My Philosophy professor always said, "you cannot invoke magic or God and expect to win an argument in this class." I am therefore left to reach only one possible conclusion. What follows is the only possible explanation for ESR's Sex Tips for Geeks .

The room was dark and the night was cold as the rain pelted against the window. Eric paid no attention, though, absorbed as he was in the warm glow of his computer monitor. A raspy voice grated out of the speakers situated on either side of his monitor, "you've got mail!"

It was his mother's voice, which he had recorded to use with the perl AOL interface he had been working on for the past 10 years. Eric smiled and wiped the sweat condensing in his palm on his thin swatch of hair, only to replace the sweat with the grease oozing from his scalp. His hands shaking, Eric simultaneously pressed the ctrl, alt, shift, F1 and page down keys to retrive the new mail message. He read the message aloud, his voice quivering with excitement.

"hi! i will meet with u on chat 7pm tonite! c u then, xoxoxoxo suzee."

Eric expunged a bulb of gas from his spastic bowel as he checked his watch. 6:57 pm. His shaking grew more extreme, more uncontrollable. He could barely press the key sequence alt, space, F10, F3, tab, scroll-lock, page-up and end to bring up his open-source AOL chat client. Eric was barely able to situate his notebook and ink his quil before the chat client began to load. Eight minutes later, the client was ready to go.

"hi eric," came the message.

Eagerly, Eric replied, "hi, suzee! how r u tonite?"

"fine, thanks. u r late! i wuz worried!"

Eric scribbled in his notebook, "women like promptness."

"i am sorry :( what did u do today?"

"it's ok..."

"Politeness goes a long way," he wrote.

"... i got in trouble in school becuz i hit this guy becuz he kept pulling my hair :("

"No hair-pulling," he noted.

"so. what grade r u in?" Suzee asked.

Eric blushed. The large beads of sweat began to roll down his face to fall on his keyboard. He wiped his forhead with his hand and picked up more grease from his thin red hair. Shaking, he replied to Suzee, "i am not in school n e more."

"that is kool! what do u do then?"

"Girls like men who are no longer in school," He scribbled, before replying.

"i write about my newfound riches and how open-source is a superior method of software development."

There was a long pause. Eric's leg began to shake nervously. After a few minutes of nervous waiting, a

Some alternatives to ant/make are

• cook (probably the best contender),
• Mk (which is like bitkeeper+make),
• Jam,
• cake (does anyone use this any more?), and
• the Plan 9 mk.

There's also something called Cons, but it needs perl to work. See this.

I haven't found a good alternative to autoconf yet. There used to be Metaconfig, but I don't know who maintains it any more (or where). It produces configure scripts similar to what you see when you configure perl. This guy uses some unreleased software package for his build systems that tend to work really well -- for C code under Unix.

Come to think of it, if someone ports/writes a build tool in C#, you'd be set.

What about cook? I've been using it at work for about a year now, and have been very happy with it. It is a new syntax to learn, but the concepts are the same as make. I'd say its as good or better than ant (and I disagree with the comment "ant is terrible". its been great on all of the java-based projects i've worked on in the past couple of years). I'd guess that cook had at least some influence on aap as well. In the interview, Bram specifically used the word "recipe", which is the same terminoligy used by cook. I'd highly reccomend it to anyone looking for a better make. http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/cook/cook.htm l

Silicon Breeze is a one man show run by Patryk Zadarnowski. Patryk is a true philanthropist; he's not rich, but he donates a lot of his income to various free software projects. For example, 15% of the income from the daemon statues goes to a BSD project, and he donated the speakers' gifts (Tux and Daemon statues, depending on your taste) for the AUUG annual conference. I don't think it's appropriate to lump him with the get-rich-quick crowd.

Greg Lehey
President, AUUG Inc.

Well, if you follow the links, specifically the award home page, you'll see that there were a total of thirteen candidates up for election. These were not all the candidates. The nominations committee had quite a job of limiting them, including some who were very deserving. I don't see any difficulty in finding enough candidates for the next three or four years; after that, I hope that new people will have sprung up to keep up the level of competition.

Greg Lehey
President, AUUG Inc.

Brisbane Tourism

travel info

Drool sheets

local W3C node

A rather interesting fact ... they recently put on HPCAsia 2001 where they revealed that Brisbane has not one, but THREE Virtual Reality facilities (UQ, QMI, Boeing). According to their blurb, they're involved in the Japanese Whole Earth Simulator (4 Teraflops), something called a Virtual Reef, as well as using it for designing their scramjets. Actually after rummaging around the AUUG website a more interesting workshop to attend would be their security symposium in Nov.

Brisbane Tourism

travel info

Drool sheets

local W3C node

A rather interesting fact ... they recently put on HPCAsia 2001 where they revealed that Brisbane has not one, but THREE Virtual Reality facilities (UQ, QMI, Boeing). According to their blurb, they're involved in the Japanese Whole Earth Simulator (4 Teraflops), something called a Virtual Reef, as well as using it for designing their scramjets. Actually after rummaging around the AUUG website a more interesting workshop to attend would be their security symposium in Nov.

I suspect it's SASH. It doesn't seem to state what it's license is, but it isn't clearly GPL. The extent of the "license" seems to be:

It might just be me being slow, but when I was at a Australian Unix Users Group conference in July they had people from Red Hat, Suse, Caldera and TurboLinux who all raved about this thing called the Linux Standards Base which is meant to stop vendor dominance and allow things like a standard package management system despite distribution...

• 4.1. A Single Makefile Is Too Big
  
• 4.2. A Single Makefile Is Unmaintainable
  
• 4.3. It's Too Hard To Write The Rules
  
• 4.4. I Only Want To Build My Little Bit
  
• 4.5. The Build Will Take Too Long
  
• 4.6. You'll Run Out Of Memory

I suggest to have a look at this article on the problems with recursive makefiles.

Linux International been heavily involved in helping to protect Linux, yes? I recall that being a major point of maddog's talk at AUUG'99.