Re: [boost] [cmake] Minimum viable cmakeification for Boost

Subject: Re: [boost] [cmake] Minimum viable cmakeification for Boost
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-06-20 15:36:54

On 20/06/2017 15:20, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
> Thomas Heller wrote:
>> As a general observation, I see a lot of statements along the lines of
>> "I state that XYZ is preferable over UVW", it would be nice to have to
>> have background information (pros and cons anyone? what do the cmake
>> authors/docs have to say about this?) on those statements so that
>> everyone can form their own opinion instead of having to choose whom
>> to trust about what's "standard" cmake.
> 
> That's the problem with CMake, there's no way for someone like me who
> does not follow it to get a definitive answer to what idiomatic CMake
> 3.5+ is. There are several articles about it, they all say more or less
> the same thing - use target_*. I get that. But that's not enough.
> 
> I see a general (and very predictable) trend of moving from imperative
> to declarative. Programmers like imperative, but a proper build system
> really prefers declarative, so CMake is trying to evolve towards
> declarative.
> 
> Take for example find_package. It's a command, find me this package,
> now. But it's much better if a library does not issue "find me this
> package" commands, but rather declares which packages it needs. So we
> get "best practice" hacks like redefining find_package. I'm sorry, this
> doesn't feel right.

A perfect summary. Thank you Peter.

Niall

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