Re: CMake: skipping compiler detection

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Daniele Benegiamo
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Andreas Fredriksson wrote:
>>
>> It is all in the fine manual :)
>
>>
>> See http://cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake-2-8-docs.html#command:project
>
> Thanks Andreas. The nice thing is that I'm using a Debian/Lenny server with
> CMake 2.6, and the installed documentation don't have any reference to the
> "NONE" language...but it works also in 2.6.

I used to know this kind of crappy CMake detail backwards, forwards,
and sideways.  It's telling that I can't remember details like that
anymore, after only 2 years, considering how much I did know.  Even
back then, I always had 1 hand in TFM.  That's part of why I was so
good at it.

A huge reason I exited / was forcibly booted out of the CMake
community, was never-ending friction about the (lack of) quality in
the CMake documentation.  Some things did get better under my constant
grilling / polishing / bug tracking little nits like this.  But
mostly, the core developers are not "documentation guys" and just
found me irritating.  Also, they had a business model where they
wanted people to buy their stupid "dead tree" paper manual.  They
never admitted it, but I don't think they want the free documentation
to be all that good.  I think they want to get paid for bothering, and
have a really old fashioned / irrelevant "dead tree" approach to
making the money.  I thought making the documentation as good as
possible for as many people as possible was much more valuable for
promoting CMake and speeding its adoption.  At one point I was so
ticked off about it, I bought a copy of their dead tree manual and was
going to crib some of their material to make a better "how to do
CMake" webpage, that nobody would have to pay for.  They got *really*
upset about that and were adamant about their copyright, etc.  Which
was besides the point, as I can write any darned webpage I want about
how to use stuff, so long as I'm not plagiarizing their written text.
I didn't realize just how uninterested they were in free documentation
until I started on that "real documentation" exercise.

The bottom line is that in open source, you get what you pay for.
There's a reason the free stuff is always breaking and driving you
nuts.  Having said that, I will point out that GNU Autoconf, lousy as
the technology is, has first rate documentation.  All its stupid
corner cases are explained in excruciating detail with real working
examples, for free.  CMake docs could wish to be that good, and boy,
did that sentiment irritate them when I'd bring it up!

Documentation is a general development problem that's hardly unique to
CMake, though.  Programmers usually don't see it as their job to
document stuff.  They usually want to produce new functionality.
Then, if a documentation format requires a big learning curve to use,
like DOC or DITA, programmers simply won't do it.  It's outside their
culture, it's not what they do every day, it's painful, and they're
usually not getting paid to do it.  So they blow it off.  Same problem
as build systems.  Most programmers won't touch build systems because
they're not an ordinary part of their programming culture.  You have
to learn crappy command languages like CMake script and so forth.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
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