CMake for D2 ready for testers

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday 05 September 2010 22:55:58 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "SK" <sk at metrokings.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.113.1283750971.858.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> 
> > Why labor over buggy Makefiles when you could be laboring over buggy
> > CMake files at a much more productive level of abstraction?  :o)
> > 
> > With excellent help from Jens Mueller and Dean Calver, CMake for D2
> > now passes our small suite of unit tests on both Windows and Linux.
> > Our tests include mixed C-D applications and libraries.  We tested
> > with CMake 2.8.2 and DMD 2.048.  We'd appreciate if a few hardy souls
> > were willing to take a test drive.  Check it out here:
> > http://code.google.com/p/cmaked2.  Please report problems on the
> > cmaked2 tracker rather than here.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, we have not had an opportunity to test on Mac OS's.
> > 
> > Briefly, CMake is a cross-platform "make maker".  Many people find
> > CMake more attractive than traditional Makefiles or Autotools,
> > especially for large projects.  You can find more information here:
> > http://www.cmake.org.
> 
> Interesting, I had no idea cmake generated makefiles. (For that matter, I
> had no idea cmake was anything more that yet another version of make, like
> nmake, GNU make, etc.)
> 
> Not to be contentious, just curious about the design philosophy behind
> cmake: Why is it a layer on-top of make at all instead of just bypassing
> the antiquated make altogether? GNU autotools does the same thing (ie,
> "fix" make by just adding more layers on top of it), and that always
> struck me as silly. Is there some particular reason for this approach?

cmake can generate a variety of different build system files, including both 
makefiles and visual studio project files. So, you can use the same cmake files to 
generate build stuff for multiple OSes. Also, it's a lot cleaner and simpler to 
set a lot of stuff up then it is in makefiles. When KDE was using autotools, they 
pretty much couldn't do a Windows version because it would have been too 
disgusting to alter them as necessary. However, after having switched to cmake, 
they could do it. I haven't used it a whole lot at this point, so I'm not sure 
of all of the ins and outs, but it's a lot more pleasant to deal with than 
makefiles, and it's a lot more flexible.

- Jonathan M Davis