Re: [boost] Boost building with CMake

From: Braddock Gaskill (braddock_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-05-10 23:20:28

Just my 2 cent testimonial...

In January I moved a moderate-sized commercial project from Makefiles to CMake.
I think I was more powerful after a week with CMake than after ten years with
makefiles and autoconf.  Build dependencies comes effortlessly (no more clumsy
-MM hacks), VPATH builds are the norm, and unit tests are handled by design.

Then we do the Windows port, and a few minor improvements to the CMakeList file
to find dependencies and the whole shebang is building cross-platform under
Visual Studio.  Then we try out KDevelop, and a simple `cmake -G KDevelop3`
provides us with project files with zero additional effort.  We now have
different developers simultaneously using KDevelop, using vim/make, and using
MSVC++ on Windows, no problem.

The real rough spots are documentation, and the lack of clear standard usage.

CMake documentation is confusing.  CMake has been a moving (improving) target
during the past couple years.  As a result, there seems to be a lot of
conflicting documentation floating around.

For the same reason, there are multiple deprecated ways to do anything, with no
clear standard usage.  The community can't even seem to agree whether CMake
commands SHOULD BE UPPER or lower case.

That said, CMake beats out any other build system I've used hands down.