Re: [boost] Cmake

Subject: Re: [boost] Cmake
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-06-24 15:25:47

On 6/24/17 7:20 AM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 1:59 AM, Peter Dimov via Boost
> <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> I've done a proof of concept for (2), which can be seen here:
>>
>> https://github.com/pdimov/boost-cmake-demo-2
> 
> Thank you for investing the time to produce this demo.
> 
>> I have identified the following (separate) scenarios:
> 
> I don't know if its listed, but I am very interested in generating
> Visual Studio project files for certain Boost projects. I would be
> more motivated to help with the maintenance of any Boost library for
> which I can use my IDE, since I can set breakpoints and I am generally
> proficient with it.

First of all, I'd like to say that root post of this thread is very 
helpful in clarifying the options and costs and value for each one.

FWIW - I'm interested in this as well.  I used the VS IDE for 
maintaining the Boost.Serialization library.  It was very convenient to 
build, test, (especialy) debug the library.  But it was a huge pain to 
setup and maintain for the hundreds targets.  I swithed to Mac as my 
main development platform.  It comes with Xcode.  Setting this up to 
build, test and debug the library was even worse on this platform. 
Having spent some time figuring out CMake to compile information/advice 
on the incubator, I was able to make CMake files to build the 
serialization library.  I had to deal with CMake quirks, FindBoost 
quirks etc.  But now I can easily create a new XCode project from the 
CmakeLists.txt files which is a huge relief.  It's much easier than 
trying to use XCode directly.  The CMake files them selves are that 
complex - after you spend a lot of time fiddling.  But now that's done 
and mostly a bad memory.  The CMakeList.txt files are part of the Boost 
Serialization Library distribution so anyone is free to look at it to 
see what I had to do.  I would hope that these file could also generate 
IDE project files for VS as well as Eclipse with no changes.  But I'm 
not in a position to test that proposition.  Note that this links with 
other boost libraries created with b2.

So I would add 7) or 8):  Use CMake to generate an IDE project to 
build/test a particular library.

Robert Ramey