Re: [boost] Request for a "Policy Review" regarding 'CMakeLists.txt'

Subject: Re: [boost] Request for a "Policy Review" regarding 'CMakeLists.txt'
From: Raffi Enficiaud (raffi.enficiaud_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-05-17 18:16:02

Le 17/05/16 à 23:31, Peter Dimov a écrit :
> Raffi Enficiaud wrote:
[snip]
>> The nice thing on eg. GitHub is that it interprets and shows the
>> README.txt/README.md.
>
> The reason Paul would rather have CMakeLists.txt at the root is because
> this is where his tool expects to find it, which expectation is correct
> by convention in the majority of the (non-Boost) cases. Tools obviously
> don't read README files.

I was more specifically referring this part of Paul's post (talking 
about google/protobuf not having a top level CMakeLists.txt):

> And this is a perfect example of why we want to put the cmake in the top-
> level, as it is entirely confusing to know how to build protobuf using
> cmake.

I understand it such that "a human is confused" (indirectly means that 
"a tool cannot be confused"). If clarification for human is the main or 
sole purpose of this post, I am suggesting to put the missing bit of 
information in a README rather than in an implicit and non official nor 
supported cmake rule or convention.

> Of course, it's not hard at all for a tool to be made to look for
> CMakeLists.txt at various predetermined locations such as
> .;./cmake;./build.. In fact, ./cmake would probably be a better place
> than ./build, because some libraries seem to already use it.

It is trivial indeed. I like ./cmake but gathering also all build 
related files in ./build looks more uniform to me for the specific case 
of Boost.

Raffi