Stop giving me things I didn't ask for, Google

I've been fighting with TinyXML++ trying to link it with a minimal program of my own construction. From reading the instructions I see that using a program called Premake is advised. Fine, but I want to use Xcode to mange my project. Can these programs work together? Naturally I ask Google: Premake Xcode?

Google responds by finding me pages which contain pairs of 'matches' like:

  • Post or pre build scripts. Build phases are how Xcode performs the different steps in a build.
  • native OS X support for Xcode, Universal Binaries, ... I think of Premake like a configure replacement.
  • xcode.destroot.settings ${xcode.build.settings}. 52, }. 53, pre-build {. 54, xcode.build.settings-append ARCHS="${os.arch}"
  • Like Xcode, the built product and temporary files will both end up in the build folder
  • GNU make, Visual Studio, CodeBlocks, XCode etc ) and the only other similar alternative is CMake. Quite a few developers prefer premake for

Notice how only the second and fifth actually match both of my search terms? More and more often now, Google doesn't treat single words as exact, and will instead go and find similar words. Unintuitive this means that to request the search that I actually wanted I have to use the query: "Premake" Xcode. Surrounding a single word with quotes still suppresses Google's desire to find other words, at least. 1

I'm not so much annoyed that Google tries to find related results as that it presents these results as though they were exact matches. They're not, and in virtually every case where i've noticed this behavior, I've noticed it for the very reason that the words google has substituted are not in fact interchangeable with the ones I wanted, so that the related results are not what I want at all. If these pseudo-matches were reported in a separate category so that I would be better warned that Google only guesses they may be useful it would be far less annoying.


  1. I find this ironic because when I was in high school I was ridiculed by a bully in one of my classes for using exactly this syntax. At the time, I think he was right; it really didn't do anything. Now, however, it not only does, but is increasingly necessary. 

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