Re: [boost] [ot] choosing a build system

Subject: Re: [boost] [ot] choosing a build system
From: Christof Donat (cd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-05-12 06:07:10

Hi,

> > Well, why should they, as long as they work to their needs? A Build
> > Tool is not an end in itself, it is a tool for a purpose. Why care
> > more than just that it fullfills its purpose?
> 
> One person's tool is another person's purpose. Design mistakes will cost
> a lot of extra work in the grand scheme of things. Both for tool writers
> and for tool users.

Maybe I missunderstood you there. For me your posting sounded like "people 
should care more about their build system". Now it sounds like "well ist's a 
fact that people don't care much about their build system".

The second is actually what I tried to point out and I think people would care 
more, if the pain was bigger. Obviously they are more or less happy with their 
eventually arcane build systems. For me the whole discussion is a little bit 
overrated.

If you like to know my oppinion about build systems: I have used GNU make for 
very many projects, where portability was not an issue. It is simple and 
straight forward, gives you all the controll at your fingertips and does what 
you tell it to do and nothing more. I still like it, but projects where 
portability is not at least a potential issue become rare for me.

For projects where portability was an issue I tried with autotools and neveer 
really was happy with it (the pain was huge). Actually I prefered to use GNU 
make and some selfmade scripts to generate the actual makefile for portability 
issues.

Then I came accross CMake. It might not be perfect, but solves the portability 
issue in an acceptable manner while keeping me in control. I am happy with it 
and there is no big pain I feel. So there is no need to change it. Yet I am 
definatelly not a CMake master. I only rarely do bigger changes to the CMake 
files once a project is set up. Usually I just add new source files or test 
suites, change some names and that's it.

Christof

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