[Chicken-hackers] Status of CMake based build system

[Oleg Kolosov]

Hello!

As you might remember I develop alternative CMake based build system for 
CHICKEN. Some time has passed since last discussion, this is status report.

Current features:

- Automatic bootstrap (going through static chicken)
- Cross platform tests and benchmarks
- Cross compiling does not need special "cross chicken" (for projects using 
CMake too)
- Native Windows support (almost untested)
- Automatic handling of module dependencies (quick and dirty but works in 
practice)
- Parallel builds
- Out of source builds
- Proof of concept Android support (will be improved in the near future)
- Proof of concept Eggs support
- Should not conflict with the current Makefile based build system

In short: much faster rebuilds with bootstrapping out of the box and actual 
test runner.

For projects using CMake too there are additional benefits: find CHICKEN 
automatically, special commands for building and using CHICKEN libraries, etc. 
No need for csc and friends. Actually it should be possible to use non CMake 
based CHICKEN in such a way.

We are using this in development and production for more than a year already. 
But our build environment is quite static, so there might be areas which need 
improvements for seamless usage in other projects, namely nothing is really 
documented.

I have several branches of this with varying degree of stability and it becomes 
quite a burden to remember where is what.

So, my proposition: if CHICKEN developers are interested in those features, I 
can rebase everything on some branch (master, stability, chicken-5, 
unit-modules, whatever) along with other things (like native Windows support, 
which does not make sense otherwise because it is impossible to test with 
Makefiles anyway), clean up and submit as patches (or github link if you 
prefer). If nobody is familiar with CMake I will even try to write some 
documentation.

If nobody is interested I will continue to maintain just single stability based 
branch.

— 
Regards, Oleg
Art-System