Re: CMake build anyone?

[Wojciech Meyer <wojciech.meyer@googlemail.com>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:
>> As I said, I think it's a good idea, but Emacs being what it is, it'll
>> probably only end up doing it many years from now (just like it took
>> ages for Emacs to adopt ANSI C, and to fully make use of autoconf).
>
> That's probably for the better anyway, as there's currently no obvious
> winner among the "new gen build systems," and all have their problems.
> Maybe in a few years, there will be more of a consensus (perhaps someone
> will do what Linus did with git -- get sick of the whole sordid mess,
> and finally do it right).

I think CMake got it `almost right'. The language is a bit obscure but
the idea is right. I am not sure however if in case of projects like
Emacs it is worth, it is not even about creating `not mature enough'
dependency (being dependent on something like Perl for instance is more
reasonable, as it is more mature project), but about what Autoconf
offers in terms of portability. Autoconf & Automake makes so good job on
checking if everything is in place before the actual build happens, that
it might be just sub-optimal vs work that should done to do it properly.
(but that's my private opinion). OTOH project like KDE switched from
autoconf to cmake with a big success, so possibly it could be done. (but
KDE is much bigger project and they'd had scalability problems).

Wojciech

>
> -Miles