Re: [Chicken-users] Mac OS X static library names

[Brandon Van Every]

On 5/15/07, Shawn W. <address@hidden> wrote:

On May 14, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Brandon Van Every wrote:
> On 5/14/07, Shawn W. <address@hidden> wrote:
>

...

>
> CMake doesn't have framework support.  See
> http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake:MacOSX_Frameworks
> The issue is known but isn't getting attention.  Bill Hoffman is
> interested in moving forwards on the issue, but could use prodding
> and assistance from the Mac community.
>

What is CMake? A replacement for generating makefiles with automake,
or a whole new make derivative?

Oh God.  FELIX, this is why keeping the Autoconf build around makes me REALLY REALLY MAD.  Not your fault, Shawn, for asking this question.  You just walked into a debate that's raging in the bug tracker right now.  http://trac.callcc.org/ticket/135 for those who want the gory details.

CMake http://www.cmake.org is a native build system generator.  It can generate makefiles, nmakefiles, Visual Studio project files, Borland makefiles, Watcom makefiles, all kinds of build system files, on all kinds of compilers on all the major operating systems.  The primary advantage of CMake over Autoconf is it handles all of the Microsoft Visual Studio compilers.  Autoconf, in contrast, deliberately avoids working with MSVC as a political agenda.  CMake is a truly cross-platform tool.  It is also significantly faster than Autoconf, as the builds are not driven by bloated shell scripts.

We've had a feature complete, field tested, all but bug free CMake build for awhile now.  It took 1 man year to produce.  It is the only way to produce the MSVC versions of Chicken, and it is preferred for MinGW also.  It works fine for all the builds on all the platforms, actually, which is why I want to retire the Autoconf system.

> Universal binary support to go along with that would be nice
> too. The latter is easy to do. (Add '-arch i386 -arch ppc' to the
> cflags used by the chicken compiler, and I /think/ everything will
> work automagically. I'll test that.)
>
>
> This can be done, but we really need a person with a Mac who's
> interested in using CMake.  I can advise but I can't test this
> issue, I have no Mac.  An interested person could put the issue
> into the bug tracker and CC: bvanevery.
>

libtool did not play well with my attempt to build chicken as a
universal.  I deeply detest libtool. I'd rather make an Xcode project
for the chicken source than fight it --  and an Xcode project has the
side benefit of making it easier to come up with a chicken framework
for all the runtime libraries.

The main reason I want Automake retired, is so that when people like you come along with energy for fixing things, that they will try their hand at CMake.  I don't want the energies of the community split by Autoconf.

At a first go, read INSTALL-CMake.txt and try to build Chicken on your Mac OS X.  Then see the bugtracker ticket I've just added about universal binaries.  http://trac.callcc.org/ticket/214


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every