Re: [boost] Boost building with CMake

From: Michael Marcin (mike_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-10 02:55:01

Bill Hoffman wrote:
> Michael Marcin wrote:
>> I'm confused as to what CMake actually does.  Is it just a generator for 
>> various makefile/IDE projects from a common description?  Does it do 
>> dependency tracking and incremental builds?  Does it do MD5 summing?  I gave 
>> a cursory glance at the website but didn't find my answers.
>>
>>   
> It does do dependency tracking if the native build system does not 
> already do it. 

How does it compare speed wise with other solutions? Fast incremental 
builds are a very nice thing to have. There have been a few discussions 
on the sweng mailing list where CMake has been brought up and I don't 
think I ever saw performance reports for it.  Generally the attitude 
there seems to be that Jam is best and KJam is better than that.  How 
does CMake compare?

>> For what I read in this thread it sounds like if I'm building my 
>> documentation it should spit out a vcproj which and then open and hit build 
>> on which then builds my quickbook application and all the libraries it 
>> depends on if they don't exist or aren't up to date and then runs quickbook 
>> to generate my boostbook xml then runs xlst-proc to generate my html 
>> documentation.  I don't really understand how that is possible.
>>
>>   
> It is possible with custom commands in vcproj files.  CMake abstracts 
> custom commands so
> you can pretty much run any tool and produce any output you want.  VTK 
> and QT both use
> code generation.  The code generators can be built and then run to 
> create code that is
> then compiled.   So, running executables to produce pretty much any 
> output is possible
> from CMake, and works with VS IDE, nmake, make, Xcode, etc.
> 

I see.

Thanks,

Michael Marcin