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Comment by ThatGuyRaion | Hacker News Reader

zstd is a great setup, for sure, but the build system they use is patently awful. Can someone make an autoconf or hell, even CMake build system for them pleasee???

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Just install the binary package from whatever distro you use? Why do you need to build it?

But if it matters, FreeBSD has a pretty trivial BSDmake build of it:

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/lib/libzstd...

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.bin/zst...

You could easily do something similar in GNU make or whatever without the dependencies on the FBSD build system. It's basically just the classic "cc -c a bunch of C files, then link them."

I suppose the point of open source software is to edit the source code and make your own version. If you can't build it, you can't do that.

Zstd has lots of contributors who have all figured out how to edit and build it.

Yeah, not sure what the original commenter is complaining about. I did "git clone https://github.com/facebook/zstd", "cd zstd", "make" and have a working binary. Doesn't get easier than that.

Not everyone is using a standard tool chain or anything like that and oftentimes when I find projects with atypical build systems that give me trouble I tend to just move on to something else

It's basically a giant GCCism. Don't be condescending.

I have no idea what you're talking about at this point.

> Just install the binary package from whatever distro you use? Why do you need to build it?

Cuz I'm actually a packaging maintainer for a couple different old operating systems. Regardless I thank you for being thankful even though I feel like you were being backhanded and demeaning on a number of levels.

> you were being backhanded and demeaning on a number of levels.

What an awful comment to make.

Quick glance of zstd github repo shows they do provide CMake build scripts?

Last I touched it they only had glitchy make files and I don't like cmake particularly, I was just like "bespoke make files are fine if they're posix compliant, but these aren't"

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