Craig Scott

Consultant, C++ developer, CMake co-maintainer and book author. Consulting services available through my company, Crascit Pty Ltd.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Very pleased to make the public announcement that I'm now offering consulting services through my new company, Crascit Pty Ltd. Interested in having me work with you on your CMake, C++ or build/release issues? Then get in touch!

https://t.co/UyJz7VV1qY

[Craig Scott @crascit]

It is incredible that despite many user bug reports and the bug being open for years, CLion can still randomly hang with "Saving settings" and there's no reliable workaround. It renders your IDE unusable and you can be left with no option but switching to another IDE. Even a complete wipe and reinstall of all JetBrains products doesn't help.
@clion_ide I love your IDE, but today I lost this battle and have to switch to something else just to do my work. I can't keep spending hours trying random things hoping to stumble on something that restores it to a working state. Even rolling back to earlier versions no longer works. I'm stating this publicly mostly because it is clear the YouTrack bug reports are not resulting in this problem being fixed. How many users will you have to lose before this bug finally gets enough attention?

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Common sense is unfortunately not so common. 😉

Having it writing gives something to point at and justify the response if a maintainer needs to push back on a submission because the author clearly didn’t exercise due care, or if submissions become advertising vectors for AI tools.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

I'm curious whether anyone has a rigorous legal opinion on whether copyright notices in source files that will never be distributed outside of a private company has any legal value at all? Simply stating something like "Copyright 20XX Company YYY" seems of dubious value.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Hot take: Pull requests that state "I vibe-coded this..." or "I put this together with AI tool XYZ..." seem to align with "I don't understand this change as well as I should", and especially with "I didn't check this change as carefully as if I wrote it myself." 🤔

I'm curious why authors feel the need to state that at all. It's used almost like an "I don't take responsibility for this change" escape hatch, as though that somehow absolves them from having to put the time in to make sure the change is correct. There are few stronger signals to a reviewer that the author isn't meeting the bar for due diligence.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

I just mistyped "whitespace" as "shitespace" in a git commit message and now I'm wondering if that would have actually been a more accurate term.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

The 22nd Edition of Professional CMake: A Practical Guide is now available. It has been updated for CMake 4.1 and 4.2, mostly with minor updates and incremental additions.

Get it from the usual place: https://t.co/QNTKn4yJTy

[Craig Scott @crascit]

The last line effect is real:

"The probability of making a mistake in the last pasted block of code is 4 times higher than in any other block."

Quoted from the following article, if you want more background: https://t.co/nJ26QAVpZ5

[Craig Scott @crascit]

@kobi_ca @bretbrownjr No problems with conferences in Canada (you're the second to ask that though). It's only the USA with growing concerns for foreigners entering the country.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Given the growing concerns non-US folks may have about conditions entering the US, attending conferences in the US is nearing "non-starter" status. As much as I love CppCon, what would y'all consider the premier C++ conference these days outside the US?
@bretbrownjr @kobi_ca @supahvee1234 @timur_audio

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Want some git fun? Create a branch in your repository called "prototype" or "constructor". See if your git GUI tool treats it the same as your other branches. At least one popular tool pretty much won't let you do anything with it, not even check out that branch. 🤨

[Craig Scott @crascit]

This is an awesome talk! Highly recommended viewing, especially if you haven't played much with LTO or symbol visibility. I learned things, even though I've gone over most of those topics in detail before.

[Jason Turner @lefticus]

Check out my C++ On Sea 2025 talk - The Power and Pain of Hidden Symbols!

This talk is very important for performance and binary size, and double important if you do crossplatform development!

https://t.co/0TnHpS1BNg

[Craig Scott @crascit]

@lefticus One of the down sides to using LTO is you lose a big chunk of build performance. =Things like ccache can no longer delivering such staggeringly big reductions in build time (orders of magnitude are common). LTO does much more work at link time, which doesn't get cached.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

@lefticus And for those who want to learn more about the CMake support for symbol visibility discussed in @lefticus' talk, it's covered in my past CppCon talk here:

https://t.co/zskExEPaaa

[Craig Scott @crascit]

@lefticus Around the 34:30 mark, you asked if anyone knows how symbol visibility interacts with modules. I did a writeup about that a while back, which you can find here:

https://t.co/XXNQTin7hd

You'll probably find the "Consequences Of BMI Implementation Details" especially relevant.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

@levelsio Steelcase Leap was super comfy, but I had to send back 4 under warranty due to what we eventually worked out was a design flaw (the back twists as you lean back in them). Ended up with the Steelcase Gesture instead, and we're happy with those.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

The 21st Edition of Professional CMake: A Practical Guide is now available. It has been updated for CMake 4.0.

There's a new chapter on debugging in IDEs, and important updates related to CMake 4.0 removing OLD behaviors.

Get it from the usual place:

https://t.co/91Mda3AY5h

[Phoronix @phoronix]

GNU Gold Linker Is Deprecated & Will Be Gone For Good Without New Developers

https://t.co/cxnCBQylh0

[Craig Scott @crascit]

I should also add I'm looking for something that works with C++17, maybe even C++11. That rules out the # embed work from C23.

[Craig Scott @crascit]

Anyone know of a successor to CMakeRC?

https://t.co/ELQZacuVms

It seems no longer maintained (no commits in more than 2 years, no response to issues and PRs). I'm looking for active alternatives that have some consensus or strong community support.