Re: CMake builds :)

[arnold]

Kuba,

Hi. I deeply apologize for the long delay in replying to this thread.
I've been very busy with the non-gawk parts of my life and then there
were a number of real bugs to deal with.

A number of questions and issues came up in the subsequent mails.
Let me try to address them, as well as where I hope you can
start to contribute.

1. Having someone willing to run and maintain CI/CD would be great.
I see that as the biggest immediate contribution you can bring
to the team.  I don't know if CMake is necessary for that. I'd
hope not. If so, let's discuss.

2. Having VS 2022 configuration files and any related changes in
the code is desirable.  I wonder if that requires CMake, or if
just the config file can be imported into the repo along with any
(I hope small!) code changes.

If VS 2022 support for C is much better than older versions, then
I see no reason to worry about the older versions, and we could
just support VS 2022 and newer.

3. It would be helpful, I think, for you to read the gawk workflow doc
at https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawkworkflow/gawkworkflow.html.
(It's also included in the distribution if you want to create a PDF.)

Initially, I'd like you to follow what it says there and submit patches
here for review / discussion.  Eventually, if it makes sense, I'll
give you write access to the repo.  For now, though, I will decline
the request, but don't take it personally. :-)

In terms of other things that came up:

1. The current autotools infrastructure works on any POSIX style
system. This includes Linux, macOS, WSL and Cygwin on Windows, z/OS,
*BSD, etc.

2. CMake support for MS-DOS is not needed. Support for DJGPP was
dropped some time ago, and nobody has complained.

3. Similarly, OpenVMS is already supported with various OpenVMS
related files and tools and there is an active maintainer on the
team for OpenVMS.

I'm looking forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you!!

Arnold

arnold@skeeve.com wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I personally don't like CMake, for a number of reasons.
>
> However, I would likely allow restoring CMake support to the distribution,
> IFF:
>
> 1. You are willing to continue to maintain it for the long term.
> 2. It allows building a working gawk with Visual Studio. Right now
>    I have no VS support.
>
> You would need to do paperwork assigning ownership of your changes
> to the FSF before I could incorporate them.
>
> Otherwise, I can at least note your GitHub in the manual.
>
> We can continue the discussion privately, if you like.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arnold
>
> Kuba Sunderland-Ober via "Bug reports only for gawk." <bug-gawk@gnu.org> 
> wrote:
>
> > In NEWS from 2021, there is
> > "The CMake infrastructure has been removed. In the five years it was in
> > the tree, nobody used it, and it was not updated.".
> >
> > >  nobody used it
> >
> > Ahem :) I would have used it if I had read those NEWS before writing a new
> > CMakeFile for gawk 5.3.0 :)
> >
> > There are various projects that need gawk to generate source files - gcc is
> > one of them. Building those under Windows is easy if gawk and a couple
> > other tools like flex and bison are included in the build, and are built
> > with cmake.
> >
> > Most gnu tools are so small that compiling them takes very little time,
> > so this is very much feasible. The typical use case is building complete
> > software packages, with build-time dependencies, using MS Visual Studio.
> >
> > In particular, I've ported sdcc's build system to cmake, and it uses
> > winflexbison's "native" cmake build script, gcc's preprocessor (I wrote
> > cmake support for it), and gawk (yep, wrote CMakeLists for that too).
> > 
> > Unfortunately, since autotools-based builds seem to have to remain
> > in perpetuity, it's unlikely that re-adding this would be considered
> > productive?
> > 
> > I've now found a 5.1.0 fork at https://github.com/mbuilov/gawk-windows
> > that also includes lots of other changes, and I don't care much for those.
> > 
> > I will push my work to github - it's minimal but good enough to target
> > Windows using gawk and mingw.
> >
> > Cheers, Kuba