Re: CMake build anyone?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Juanma Barranquero <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 19:28, Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> but if there is interest from any of the build
>> maintainers, I could steer the development for creating a "serious"
>> build specification.
>
> IIUC, with CMake you write configuration files, from which you
> generate "normal" makefiles.

Yes. CMake creates files for your tool of choice (`make', `nmake',
Eclipse, etc.) It is not a build tool itself, but a build generator.

> That would be useful if it allowed us to simplify and reunify the
> GNU/Linux / Unix / MSDOS / Windows makefiles, bulding them from a
> single set of source configuration files. That's not a trivial
> undertaking, though.

I did that for LLVM (1) and it is perfectly doable for Emacs,
AFAIK. Maybe there are a few configuration tests that are not trivial,
but we can "borrow" from autoconf.

Please note that I'm not proposing throwing away the autoconf-based
build (not because CMake can't replace autoconf/automake, but just
because I already created enough controversy here.) Just providing cmake
as an option where autoconf is available, and as the official method
where it isn't.

One caveat: knowing nothing about the emacs MSDOS build, I don't know
how well CMake works for it. Maybe we can use cmake's cross-compiling
feature for driving the MSDOS compiler (DJGPP?)

1: http://www.llvm.org