Re: CMake build anyone?

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

> From what I heard, CMake is an interesting tool and we may consider
> using it for Emacs.  But the way I see it, it only really makes sense to
> do that if it can be used for "all" platforms and/or if it can be used
> to reduce the amount of stuff to install (e.g. in Windows).

CMake scripts are inherently cross-platform and in the case of Emacs the
build would work for all platforms, except MSDOS. Cross-compiling could
be used for generating MSDOS executables, but Eli already explained that
bootstrapping Emacs on MSDOS is required by DJGPP.

On Windows, we remove one requirement (`rm' and `cp') and add another
(cmake.) CMake does lots of other interesting things, though. This is a
partial list of the features and benefits provided by cmake (`cmake'
here includes `ctest' and `cpack'):

http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/Really_Cool_CMake_Features

> So unless CMake can be used to make it easier to install Emacs on
> Windows, I think it'll have to wait until cmake is likely to be
> installed on most unixy systems.  I.e. don't hold your breath.

Fair enough. But please note that I was not proposing replacing the
current autoconf build with cmake (although some users could benefit
from having a cmake build on Unix, see the feature list linked above.)

My proposal was motivated by my impression about the Windows build being
hard to maintain and I thought that the developers could be interested
on an alternative that removes most of the burden so they can focus
their efforts elsewhere. Since only Juanma expressed some interest and
other people objected, let's forget the proposal and move on.