[Vm-dev] Ian's cmake design (was: svn git bridge?)

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Sat Apr 23 22:13:54 UTC 2016


On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 10:44:02AM -0700, Eliot Miranda wrote:
> 
> > On Apr 23, 2016, at 10:30 AM, Tobias Pape <Das.Linux at gmx.de> wrote:
> > 
> > PS: Personally (i.e. IMHO), I think that IF we go with cmake, we should follo Ians way with
> >    probably some mix of the self vm stuff. It can really work. And it can also help us
> >    getting things compiled on MS compilers, btw.
> 
> What do you mean by "Ian's way" exactly?  Please describe it.  
> 
> Things I know:
> - Ian's autoconf code (platforms/unix/conf, the various additional snippets that get included when one builds the autoconf support, rather than things that get computed at build time) is extremely difficult to work with
> - gmake files work with MS compilers too
> 

My experience is different. I find it a bit obscure in the sense that it
would benefit from some better documentation and comments in the cmake files.

Aside from that, Ian got the design dead right. Cmake handles the overall
build. The VM build procedures are in a small number of files. Configurations
that are specific to some part of the build tree are located with the source,
and versioned with the source files to which they apply.

Looking back at the last seven years or so, I would say:

- The number of changes to the cmake procedures has been minimal.
- Building a VM with Ian's procedure is still remarkably easy.
- The total amount of code (cmake files) required to make this work is small.
- In the few cases where I needed to change something, I have been able to
  figure out what to do.
- Despite years of upgrades (sic) to my operating systems and compilers,
  it still works.

I have very little patience for fiddling around with build systems, and
no patience whatsoever for autotools. But I have had no trouble using
and occasionally modifying Ian's cmake build procedures.

Dave
 


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