libbuild2-autoconf VS raylib

> If make supplied it's own shell language, a simplified one, then everything would be fantastic.

We did exactly that in build2, a modern make re-thought. And we provide a bunch of standard utilities like sed, find, etc., that work the same everywhere, including Windows. Here is an example of a non-trivial recipe: https://github.com/build2/libbuild2-autoconf/blob/17f637c1ca...

> [...] treated some of the code used for various feature checks invalid and the end result was checks failing even though they should have passed - often with barely any notification to the user (the user would see a "no" instead of a "yes" in some check)

This is a perfect illustration of conceptual bankruptcy of the autoconf approach. Using compile/link tests and basing a decision on whether they succeeded or failed without distinguishing the reasons for failure will inevitably lead to silent false negatives.

If you are wondering what to and what are the alternatives, here is one approach: https://github.com/build2/libbuild2-autoconf

I don’t have a review, but here’s a significant project using it in a complicated cross platform build with different systems dependencies: https://github.com/raysan5/raylib/blob/master/build.zig

They also have a cmakelists.txt to compare against.

One of the nicer things is that if you’re working with less technical folks, they only need to download the zig binary because it bundles the entire toolchain.

As I play around with raylib, the small, easy, and exceptionally cool game library, I met a small issue. There is no elegant way of packing files together. When I use a texture or audio, or any external resources, I either need to convert it into a C++ header that declares a byte array filled with that resource, or making sure the the user having the resource at the particular place. The first approach is no good when comes to loading new resource after compilation, while the latter approach is kind of awkward and too easy to break.

For this most recent assignment we were tasked with contributing a larger feature to an open source project. During my time with the previous assignment I worked on a game engine called Litecanvas, inspired engine by libraries like raylib and p5.js/Processing.

Let's take a look at another API. Raylib. Now Raylib does a little bit more than just load images. Raylib is more of a game framework than a single-purpose library. It will create a window, handle input, load images, render pixels, handle loading and rendering fonts, and so on. Even though Raylib does multiple things, it doesn't go overboard. It tries to be simple yet robust. There's a clear vision for the library. They didn't try to force a GUI editor into the API or an alternative string type. It had one goal and that is to become a game framework. What happens when Raylib has added all the features it needs to add? Well, call it feature-complete and just move on. There's no need to bloat an API for no reason other than you "felt like it".

Don't like having to use gigantic game engines to make games? Here's a whole suite of beautifully simple libraries with bindings for a lot of languages: raylib

Do like playing video games? I know I do; in fact, I enjoy it so much that I learned how to make video games. So, for a recent course I’m taking in school for open-source development I decided to focus on Raylib. Raylib describes itself as “a simple and easy-to-use library to enjoy videogames programming.” Written in pure c with bindings for almost any other programming language such as c++, Rust, and Python. It is a flexible tool which can work in almost any environment.