Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] an example of a gnuradio project using cmake

[Tom Rondeau]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Josh Blum <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hey list,
>
> I would like to share my experiences with CMake.
>
> I started using CMake because I needed a cross-platform build system for
> making UHD and I stumbled upon CMake. After learning CMake and building
> UHD on-top of it, I can conclude that CMake is indeed awesome.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- OK, what is it?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> CMake is a cross platform build system. In short, it translates a
> description of your projects build rules and files and generates a
> platform specific build system. This means that it not only generates
> Makefiles (like autotools), but can also generate eclipse project files,
> xcode projects, MSVC projects, and more.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- How does it compare to autotools?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------


The biggest problem that I see with cmake is that the burden of proof
lies with cmake. We have years of building up the project
configuration in autotools and every problem we have come across has
been solvable and solved in this framework. While some/many of these
problems might have been solved faster with cmake, we do a lot of
strange stuff in many different parts of GNU Radio's build system. We
would need proof that cmake can actually handle everything, and that
probably means redoing the entire build system with cmake. Honestly,
right now, I have more important things to do than work on this, even
as a part of the rebuild. In the rebuild that we hope to do soon, we
know exactly how to handle it in autotools and we have the benefit of
having the solutions to our build problems already solved.

It's really not worth my time (or anyone else's that I can think of)
to redo the entire build system at this point. The single outstanding
issue in the build system currently is working in Windows, and I don't
think the problems there are things that cmake will automatically fix
for us.

I appreciate your thoughts, concerns, and ideas here. Hopefully, you
understand my concerns about moving to a new build system, though.

Thanks,
Tom