Re: [ww-tedit-dev] Moving to cmake

[petar marinov]

Tzvetan Mikov wrote:
> On 9/25/06, petar marinov wrote:
> > 1) cmake is not as flexible as your own make files.
>
> Perhaps not, but it is very flexible and even though I have used make
> files for perhaps 10 years, cmake is immediately more obvious. I think
> that wiill be sufficient for almost anything.
>
> On the other hand one problem with cmake is that compiling languages
> which it doesn't support directly is very verbose. Take this
> expression to compile a Bison file:
>
> ADD_CUSTOM_COMMAND(
>  SOURCE p1-parse.y DEPENDS p1-parse.y OUTPUT p1-parse.tab.c p1-parse.tab.h
>  COMMAND bison ARGS -v -d p1-parse.y
>  WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}
> )
>
> and compare it to the make equivalent:
>
> p1-parse.tab.c p1-parse.tab.h: p1-parse.y
>      bison -v -d $<
>
> I am still a cmake newbie; perhaps there is a better way. In any case,
> cmake feels a little like Ant - it is very convenient for C, but is
> clumsy for other things.

I couldn't figure some stuff about cmake myself and that's why I bought 
the book about cmake.


> > 2) I think that one gnu make file can work even with visualC. Nothing
> > prohibits make from calling cl and link! Here where I work we use gnu
> > make for our windows builds.
>
> While that is acceptable within a company, I think it is out of the
> question for projects like ww. If you are going to use gmake for
> Windows, you are much better off compiling with mingw.

I forgot to mention another option. There is a standalone gnu make for 
windows that is outside cygwin. It packages _make_ along with a few unix 
tools. That will be sufficient for a functional build based on gnu make 
with visualC on windows.

Also, I think that compiling with mingw doesn't rule out compiling with 
visualC. I prefer to have both.

One attractive aspect of cmake is that it generates visualC project. I'm 
still using visualC 6. visualC 7 is available for a free download and I 
would wish to compile ww with it, but it is a headache to port the 
project file to the new environment (more so than plainly fixing a make 
or cmake file).


> > 3) Is it a good idea to ask people to have cygwin installed in order to
> > compile the windows version?
>
> Definitely not.

What do you think about these options:
1) ask people to download free visualC7
2) ask people to install the standalone gnu _make_ for windows
3) ask people to install mingw which will optionally be able to compile 
with visualC (I don't know what is inside mingw, I believe it includes 
make which we can use both for mingw and _cl_)

Standalone make has one advantage. I can be make part of visialC project 
as external build. Probably if we go with cygwin it will be just a shade 
harder to achieve the same.


> > 4) We already have a makefile for gnu make that works, going with cmake
> > meant that we abandone it, in this regard this is one factor to stay
> > with make and not move to cmake
>
> I don't see this is a problem. For a trivial project like ww, it will
> take less than half an hour to convert. Emotial attachment shouldn't
> govern technical decisions.

I'm willing to sacrifice the work that went in the current makefile for 
unix based on the factors I mentioned in this and my previous e-mail.

--pe


> -tz
>
> PS. Should we move this to Zepp to increase the audience ?

I don't think that presently there are enough people there that would 
find this interesting.