[LLVMdev] RFC: Timeline for deprecating the autoconf build system?

[Stephen Kelly]

Steven Stewart-Gallus wrote:

> Hello, thank you for the thoughts.
> 
>> Have you seen the docs for CMake3.0 [1] (see cmake-buildsystem
>> especially)? They certainly aren't perfect but they are considerably
>> better than what was there before.
> 
> Okay, the documentation has come a long way since 3.0 although it
> still needs a bit of polish.

The new documentation system is new in CMake 3.0. We welcome additions. I'm 
glad the cmake-buildsystem manual I wrote is well-received.

>> $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/root/usr/local  /path/to/llvm/src
> 
> Correct, but I cannot set it as a default in a configuration file so I
> need to specify it for every single package that I compile every time
> I configure it. I think this a very basic and obvious feature that
> CMake should support.

I don't understand the problem. Can you re-state it?

>> As mentioned above you can override the installation directory
>> whenever you like (but it may trigger a rebuild).
> 
>> but it may trigger a rebuild
> 
> Yeah, that's not what I want.

It won't trigger a re-build. 

It only *could* trigger a rebuild of particular files if you use the install 
prefix in source code either by generating a header file containing it or 
passing it in a -D define. As your workflow apparently depends on something 
along the lines of 'make install prefix=/tmp/llvm', that is assuredly not 
the case. So,

  It won't trigger a re-build. 

> The fundamental difference between Autotools and CMake is that they
> are built for different users. CMake is built for the modern developer
> in 2014 on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or FreeBSD.

This is definitely not true.

Thanks,

Steve.