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LCA: Disintermediating distributionsLCA: Disintermediating distributionsPosted Feb 6, 2008 23:37 UTC (Wed) by vapier (subscriber, #15768)In reply to: LCA: Disintermediating distributions by aleXXX Parent article: LCA: Disintermediating distributions
too bad cmake and scons continue to re-solve the same problems autotools solved eons ago (cross-compiling / tool discovery / custom flags). scons in particular is just terrible and not in any sort of usable shape for serious projects.
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LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 1:33 UTC (Thu) by modernjazz (guest, #4185) [Link] So why are so many projects, which already have "working" autoconf build systems, doing all that "useless work" to switch to CMake? The next thing that happens is most of them seem to express great satisfaction and relief with the result. Is this just self-delusion to justify the work?
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 10:25 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Sometimes. Like the migration lots of projects have done from going from CVS to SVN to Git or whatever else. When mucking around with a program have you ever noticed that once you program something out, but find some reason to rewrite it, that it turns out to be better then your original version? Ya sure you could of spent that time bugfixing the old code or hacking new features into it, but your going to be almost certain that the new code is going to make your job of maintaining and improving it just that much better. I have a feeling that if many of those projects just stripped out all the stuff they used make (or autotools or whatever) for and then reimplimented it from scratch then they would of been nearly as happy with it. Also projects that are ho-hum about converting to cmake are not all of a sudden going to turn around and broadcast to the world that they spent a great deal of their time on something that ended up not mattering a whole lot. It's not like they are going to end up being examples while other projects just love it.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 10:59 UTC (Thu) by modernjazz (guest, #4185) [Link] Sure, a simple project works great with any of several build strategies, so of course not everyone will be thrilled by switching. But if CMake only lacks the "I got burned by #!@%*& CMake" contingent, it's already ahead of the competition.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 12:36 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] My *eyes* got burned by cmake's language. Haven't they learned that capital letters make things *harder* to read? Have we learned nothing since the days when Lisp was written in capitals?
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 14:26 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] Since CMake 2.4.3, released July 2006 (or around that version) the commands can be written lowercase, with the coming version 2.6 this is even the preferred style (i.e. which is used in the documentation). Alex
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 21:28 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] YES! (Time to upgrade. Is my cmake really that old? ... 2.4.1. dammit.)
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 22:10 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] 2.4.1 was a beta version, a lots of bugs were fixed for 2.4.3. Version 2.4.8 has been released a few weeks ago, I recommend you use this. If there is no package for your distro, just download the binary package from www.cmake.org and just unpack it in some place you like, it will work. Alex
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 23:19 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Yeah, like I said, it was really stupid of me not to upgrade. In fact I've *got* a more recent version installed: it's just this bloody old version in /usr/local/bin was hiding it... *sigh* chkdupexe time, I think.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 20:24 UTC (Thu) by vapier (subscriber, #15768) [Link] i didnt say it wasnt working *for them*. they probably wouldnt have made the build system change if it wasnt working *for them*. the trouble is when *anyone else* tries to build the package. you want to cross-compile it ? build it on a different platform ? build with your own compiler/flags ? sorry, but the $flavor-of-the-month build system never thought of that. time to go re-implement the wheel even though autotools already had it solved.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 21:47 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] The worst I've found for this is Boost.Jam. It should *not* take 7Kb of diffs and a kilobyte of build-system shell scripting to do the equivalent of setting --prefix and CXXFLAGS when building Boost!
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 22:17 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] I'm not sure I get your point here, so I just state what cmake offers here: CMake cvs (2.6.0 will be released soon) supports cross compiling (without scratchbox or any other emulators, but of course it can also be used inside scratchbox). If you want to use your own CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS with CMake, you have at least two ways to do it: set CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS when you run cmake, cmake will use them. Or, later on, run "make edit_cache" and edit the CMAKE_C_FLAGS/CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS directly to what you want. If you build the software on some system where it has never been built before it may very well be necessary that you have to do something on the buildsystem, add some more checks, add some other locations, other names for libraries (e.g. z lib has a lot of different names on Windows). I guess this is true for any buildsystem. Alex
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 22:40 UTC (Thu) by vapier (subscriber, #15768) [Link] your comment backs up my point. all of these alternative build systems consistently re-solve the exact same problems that autotools solved eons ago. cmake *just* added support for cross-compiling (and it isnt even in any released version) ? without even looking at anything else about cmake, that tells me the project is useless to me. i'm not saying my needs are the same as everyone out there, just that you cant champion a replacement for autotools if it isnt a replacement. i'm glad *you've* found it useful, but if your target compiling audience is more than just you, then i feel sorry for those poor chaps (where chaps != you). the things i cite are just common examples ive come across quite frequently when dealing with non-autotooled packages as a distribution maintainer (whether it be cmake or scons or hand rolled or whatever). they certainly a complete list. i imagine there are numerous other portability fixes autotools has which these "replacements" lack.
LCA: Disintermediating distributions Posted Feb 7, 2008 23:22 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] autoconf-generated configure scripts also support the godsends which are site-config files. Nobody else seems to remember about that, which means you need to wrap another build system around your build system just to get your CFLAGS et al consistent.
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