[LLVMdev] Distributing CMake-generated files

[Óscar Fuentes]

Mike Stump <mrs at apple.com> writes:

> On May 25, 2009, at 1:06 PM, Óscar Fuentes wrote:
>> Paul Melis <llvm at assumetheposition.nl> writes:
>>> Is the current support in CMake for generating makefiles with  
>>> relative
>>> paths not good enough?
>>
>> No. And the cmake people think there is no easy fix.
>
> :-(  Kinda sad.  I can't imagine that this isn't trivial.  Doesn't  
> inspire confidence...

It is far from trivial. To begin with, think that a fundamental part of
cmake's work before makefile generation consists on locating libraries,
executables, etc required for the build. This is like saying that, if
you release the source code with makefiles generated by cmake, you are
releasing it after the config step (using autotools parlance). Added to
this, some build tools (mostly IDEs) dislike relative paths on some
settings.

After giving some thought to the problem, I concur with the cmake devs:
there is no foolproof solution.

We need to wait until cmake is accepted as just one more tool on the
standard toolset. This can require a long time on some
environments. OTOH, I can't think of any serious user ditching LLVM
because he refuses to use cmake.

There are organizations where inter-department issues are the real
blocker, though. The old Visual Studio project files are still there
because of this "don't impose more requirements on us" actitude from one
department towards another on one organization that uses LLVM.

-- 
Óscar