[cfe-dev] [LLVMdev] RFC: Upcoming Build System Changes

[Óscar Fuentes]

Reid Kleckner <reid.kleckner at gmail.com> writes:

> While eliminating duplication is one of the goals I see in this build system
> change, I think the more important ones are a) simplifying the build files
> and b) making the build faster.

The "build files" are the Makefiles, right? And Dan's proposal will not
make the cmake build any faster. So those goals are orthogonal to the
cmake build.

> Adding CMake code (I agree it's a terrible scripting language) to parse
> Makefiles will make the build slower and more complicated.

Wrong! :-) Adding that feature is a few lines of code (orders of
magnitude less than the system proposed by Dan) which are executed only
at generation-time, i.e. when cmake has to regenerate the
makefiles/project-files because a file was added/removed, etc. It adds
nothing at build time and you will need a stopwatch to notice the
difference at generation time.

> I'm not really a stakeholder, but I agree with Chandler, it's worth
> investigating simplifying LLVM's CMake files before making Yet Another build
> system generator if you haven't already.  That may not solve the problems
> associated with the bad XCode project generation, though.

You guys are mixing several things on the discussion. What Dan proposed
makes no difference for Xcode. If it speeds up the Makefile-based build
(something I doubt) that's good, but it is unnecessary for that system
to fiddle with the cmake build as long as cmake can deal with the
changes on its own.

Keep in mind that, if Dan goes ahead his plans, tinkering on any build
system would require knowledge of both of them plus the python
scripts. That's adding complexity, quite a lot.

[snip]