[Geany-devel] Build system branch 2.0

[Lex Trotman]

Hi Enrico,

> IMO way too much information.

Then I guess Geany does too much :-) because other than working
directory the build-system adds no extra functionality. As you say
below its all about configuration.

At the moment a lot of the configuration invisibly set by where in the
menu an item appears, both limiting and confusing.  Maybe I'm slow,
but all the time I have been working on the build system I didn't
really realise this point, and that its the cause of many code
complications and the configuration problems I had..

If it took that long for me to realise that this hidden, hard coded
paradigm exists I am sure that it is going to be a problem for others
as well so I want to remove it.

> I already said that about the current build settings in the SVN version
> and this one is even worse, IMHO. Yes, for users who want the ultimate
> control of every single build option that could be useful but, as also
> said multiple times before, the idea of Geany's build system was to be
> easy to use and to just get the job done. From my experience, this was
> much appreciated by users (getting lots of mail stating this). Well,
> this feature we will loose with the current rework in the SVN version
> and with the mockup in the new branch, it won't get better, IMHO.

I understand your point, thats why I made a prototype thats easy to
fiddle with so that we can try things out.  The intention is to make
it better.

I fundamentally disagree with the notion that functionality should not
be available to the user if its in the software, but i agree that
simple things should, no MUST be simple.

The approach is to allow progressive expansion of detail as users get
more confident and need more complex control.   Clearly the rate of
expansion is a bit too fast in the current version :-).  But I thought
I would start with the simplest expansion paradigm and we can go from
there.

As an alternative to expansion we could have sub-dialogs for detail.
Personally I like spreadsheets where I can see it all spread of in
front of me but I understand the apparent complexity problem.

>
> Sorry when this sounds a bit hard and I do understand your motivation
> to make it all more flexible. But it's maybe just not want
> some/most/all users want.
>
>>Please be warned, if you havn't read the spec (which is the only
>>documentation until the manual is updated) that this looks complex
>>when you first see it in advanced mode.  But the dialog does no more
>>than bring together settings that already exist in various hidden
>>places in Geany.
>
> I skimmed over the docs but it didn't make it better. The dialog is
> still heavily crowded and quite complex.
>

What about when its not in advanced mode and no project,   There is a
picture of the menu to select which menu item settings you want to
adjust, and for each item only 3 entries (for label, command and
working directory) for each of the filetype and the user prefs.

With a project open you have the two extra sets of 3 to save in the project.

>
>>As you said, this is a prototype which maybe needs more work. - Also
>>from the user point of view and in GUI design. Just a suggestion: You
>>could work with the GUI element from GTK which allows to extend the
>>dialog via clicking on the arrow (as in the Find or Replace dialog in
>
> Just for the record, iIt's called GtkExpander.

I'll see if that can be used to allow more progressive expansion an
operation at a time.  Other suggestions welcome.

Cheers
Lex

>
>
> Regards,
> Enrico
>
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