Re: [Chicken-users] alternate build tools

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Tony Garnock-Jones wrote:

> Ashley Bone wrote:
>  
>
> > The most common settings are handled by scons (for instance, things like
> > -fPIC for gcc or /MD for msvc).
> > Special flags like optimizations and so forth have to be explicitly
> > added, but I think that's true of any tool.
> >    
>
> The crucial question is going to be libtool-type support. How well do
> any of these tools cope with building different styles of shared
> library/DLL?
>
>  
CMake has built some pretty huge software systems like the Visualization 
Toolkit http://www.vtk.org/ so I don't see this as a big deal.  I'm more 
worried about the quality of the MinGW support.  I heard "somewhere in 
passing" that CMake can handle MinGW now, but the CMake webpage and the 
docs still don't explicitly mention it.  So that makes me worry that 
it's not a well-exercised target (gee, much like Chicken and so many 
other open source projects.)

Still, I cannot worry unduly.  I've already made the decision that I 
will attempt CMake.  But, I have to go get a job or get tossed out of my 
apartment, so I can't put much effort into this right now.  If it's 
easy, then suddenly I'll say Hey Presto.  If it's hard, either because 
of CMake or the Chicken architecture itself, then I probably won't get 
it done.  Like, if I had to bang on something for a month to get it to 
work, I wouldn't bother.  I'd just concentrate on other projects of mine 
that are easier to make progress on.

If anyone wants to team up with me to try to bang out a CMake, that 
would be welcome.  More likely to stay focused that way.

In any event, realistically it's gonna be CMake or SCons.  I doubt 
anyone believes that Ant ant-contrib CC Task is going to be pleasant.  
The only reason I brought it up is because I'm doing Eclipse stuff.  
Anyways, if the SCons crowd wants to get together and bang something 
out, and it's easy to do, then by all means go for it.  But that's not 
the road I will travel for now.  I believe CMake is the ticket, as it's 
meant to replace GNU Autotools and be cross-platform.  It doesn't add a 
language dependency, so if all else is equal between CMake and SCons, 
that's a win.

It's all going to be about actually attempting a build, since it seems 
none of us really have the experience at these tools to know what they 
can handle.

Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every
   (cruise (director (of SeaFunc)
           '(Seattle Functional Programmers)))
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc