Re: New experimental build system using CMake

Hi Kevin

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 06:01:36PM -0500, Kevin Zheng wrote:
> While I was working on updating the version of Gnucap in the FreeBSD
> Ports Collection, I realized that I didn't really like the existing
> build system, for multiple reasons. Feeling adventurous, I cloned the
> repository and tried to set up a build system using CMake.

have you tried the autotools build system? (i havent pushed it to
savannah yet, as it's still experimental, find it on tool [1])

> Attached is a patch with my work in progress. Although it is still far
> from finished, I think it's a good start towards a cleaner build system.
> You can apply the patch by using `git am <patch>`.

it looks like a list of files rather than a build system. is that
intended? there is no configure script. how is this supposed to be used?

> A major limitation is that CMake refuses to create output files with the
> "same" name. Since there is already a "gnucap" library, it is not able
> to produce a "gnucap" executable. I've temporarily renamed the
> executable to "gcap", which can successfully run on my machine.

library names typically start with "lib", so there should be no trouble.

> I know that build systems bring big changes (and dependencies), but I
> would like the project to consider the prospect of moving to a simpler,
> more elegant build system.

the build system should at least implement what the upstream build
system does. please explain how to configure yours, how CMakeLists will
call modelgen....
i consider (at least) a 'dist' target and objdir!=srcdir mandatory.
would that be possible?

regards
felix

[1] git://tool.em.cs.uni-frankfurt.de/git/gnucap_deb ("build" branch)