Re: CMake build anyone?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Juanma Barranquero <address@hidden> writes:

>> A CMake install is required.
>
> Why? (Note: I'm talking only about MSDOS/Windows.)

[snip]

> I.e, I think the easiest transition path is having CMake as a tool
> *for the maintainers*, to regenerate the makefiles.

This is a common requirement but not possible. CMake does the job of
`configure' and hence it is sensitive to the contents of the user's
machine and to the options he sets. Then, build files for his tool of
choice are generated. They can be makefiles for make, or nmake, or
jom... They can be project files for an assortment of IDEs too.

Even if it were possible to distribute functional makefiles (it is not,
due to technial details) they would force a very stringent set of
requirements on the user wrt which libraries must be installed, etc.

As mentioned before, I think that depending on cmake is more convenient
than depending on gnuwin32/msys.

[snip]

>> For the time being, we can put MSDOS aside and go ahead if cmake is seen
>> as convenient enough by the Windows maintainers.
>
> As long as it is an alternative and not a replacement, it seems like a
> good idea worth trying IMHO.

I'm convinced that you will appreciate the simplification CMake brings
over the current Windows build system.

> All this conditional on RMS, Stefan and Chong not opposing using CMake
> as an alternate build system for political or technical reasons, of
> course.

CMake is under the BSD license. If anyone opposes from now on to
including support for cmake on the source distribution of Emacs, please
speak up. That would save me a few hours of boring work.