If you're on unix, I think the only thing you really need is cc and ld. The build system aims for flexibility instead of each project being its own personal world and things are duplicated ad momentum. Everyone is happy playing in their little sandbox instead of truly collaborating with each other and create great software.
Indeed. This is exactly the problem. It is no fun helping with maintenance of an existing project, fix some boring bug, deal with all the historical constraints, necessary support for old systems, etc.
It is so much more fun to cargo-download some stuff and build some new shiny Rust-xyz implementation of Z on your Apple Macbook and even get some HN attention just for this. The problem with all the Rust hype is that people convince themselves that they are actually helping the world by being part of a worthwhile cause to rid the world from old languages, while the main effect is that i draws resources away from much more important efforts and places an even higher burden on the ecosystem - making our main problem - sustainable maintenance of free software - even harder.
I'm not sure a post about a 12 year long project dealing with fixing bugs to match historical constraints with a make build option was really the best choice for this particular rant.
