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FAQ: document additional tools required for C/C++ development #2374

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FAQ: document additional tools required for C/C++ development #2374

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8a2fcc2
FAQ: document additional tools required for C/C++ development
traversaro Nov 17, 2024
b36b389
[pre-commit.ci] auto fixes from pre-commit.com hooks
pre-commit-ci[bot] Nov 17, 2024
85dbd59
Do not suggest to install a fortran compiler in C/C++ faqs
traversaro Nov 17, 2024
758a88e
Remove c-compiler
traversaro Nov 27, 2024
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6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions docs/user/faq.md
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Expand Up @@ -94,6 +94,12 @@ x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0-clang: No such file or directory

are a telltale sign that you are lacking compilers.

Depending on the specific tools that you use for building C/C++ code, you may need some additional tools, for example:
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Depending on the specific tools that you use for building C/C++ code, you may need some additional tools, for example:
The actual orchestration of the various compilation and linking steps is almost always done
by some build orchestrator (e.g. `CMake`, `meson`, ...), which will generally require a
build system (e.g. `ninja`, `make`), or possibly other supporting tools like `pkg-config`.
We package several tools that can be used for building C/C++ code; a selection that covers
the most common scenarios would be:


```
compilers cmake pkg-config make ninja meson
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compilers cmake pkg-config make ninja meson
c-compiler cxx-compiler pkg-config cmake make ninja

While I appreciate that using compilers is a one-stop way to ensure both c-compiler and cxx-compiler get added, it feels a bit strange to also suggest that people just install fortran-compiler even if they may have no need for it. Similarly it seems strange to suggest installing meson as well.

My views here are all conditioned on a research field that is a bit more conservative about pulling in additional dependencies that are not strictly required, and that I like people to generally understand why they have most of (not going to say all) of the dependencies installed that they do. At the same time, I'm being slightly inconsistent by not complaining about ninja, but ninja is awesome and when it can get automatically used that's even better.

So my suggestion here is more along the lines of sticking to the

C/C++ code

part of your additions.

Alternatively/Additionally, I'd suggest mentioning what each of these dependencies brings / why you'd want to install them.

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@traversaro traversaro Nov 17, 2024 •
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I agree on not installing a fortran compiler, applied your suggestions on 85dbd59 . As a personal opinion, I think that instead is fruitful to have meson here, as there are huge communities in C/C++ world that consistently use meson (gnome, mesa, c/c++ bits of numpy&scipy), but let's what is the consensus around this.

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I'll defer to you and other reviewers here. I come from a field where in terms of build systems CMake is considered the "new" way of doing things and we're slowly clawing our way out of autotools + custom stuff. I only learned that meson even existed when SciPy started their transition to it as their build system.

```

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<a id="why-don-t-the-c-c-compilers-automatically-know-how-to-find-libraries-installed-by-conda"></a>
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